Mus spicilegus ranges from Austria to Southern Ukraine and Greece. Two subspecies are recognised, M. s. spicilegus, the nominate subspecies occupying most of the range, and M. s. adriaticus, an isolated sub-population on the Adriatic coast. It is one of three species of mice in the Mus subgenus with a western Palearctic distribution, the others being the Macedonian mouse , and the Algerian mouse . Based on the molecular clock hypothesis, M. spicilegus and M. macedonicus seem to have diverged quite recently, between 0.29 and 0.17 mya, whereas the lineages giving rise to these and M. spretus diverged around 1 mya.
Description
The head-and-body length is between and the tail is between long. The colour is mostly a uniform grey with no hint of redness, but some populations are bicoloured and have paler underparts. The tail is more slender than that of other related species. This mouse is very similar in appearance to the common house mouse, and the two are often confused. The most significant difference is the mound-building proclivities of Mus spicilegus, but these are only apparent at certain times of year.
Ecology
This species is found in grassland, steppe, cultivated land, orchards, clearings and woodland borders. It is unique among mice in its habit of building mounds in the autumn. These are constructed by a number of mice and can be up to in diameter, although a more normal size is. Some four to fourteen mice cooperate to build the mounds, and these have been shown to be closely related, probably through the mother's line. The mound is built over storage chambers which can hold up to of seeds and grains, underneath which is a nesting chamber. Up to twenty mounds per hectare is typical but there can be many more than this under particularly favourable conditions. Breeding is seasonal in this mouse, taking place between about March and October. Young females, six to eight months old which have spent the winter in the mound, breed in the spring and may have four or five litters of young during the year; in central Ukraine, the litter size averages 6.7 young. During the summer, most animals live in simple burrows, but some continue to inhabit the mound, and if it survives intact, it may be reused in the autumn for winter quarters. New mounds are constructed between about mid-August and mid-November, when cereal crops are maturing and other plants producing seeds. The construction is done by juveniles, three to four weeks old, and the mound is their winter home, with adults occasionally cohabiting. The mounds usually take two or three weeks to construct, and their size is dependent on the number of animals involved and the abundance of the food supply. The seeds of 84 species of plants have been found stored in the mound.
