The Striped Field Mouse (Apodemus agrarius) is a rodent

Rodent

Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....

 in the family Muridae

Muridae

Muridae is the largest family of mammals. It contains over 600 species found naturally throughout Eurasia, Africa, and Australia. They have been introduced worldwide. The group includes true mice and rats, gerbils, and relatives....

. The range of this species stretches from Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

 to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, including Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

 and Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

.

Accepted synonyms include Apodemus albostriatus (Bechstein, 1801), Apodemus caucasicus (Kuznetzov, 1944), Apodemus chejuensis (Johnson and Jones, 1955), Apodemus coreae (Thomas, 1908), Apodemus gloveri (Kuroda, 1939), Apodemus harti (Thomas, 1898), Apodemus henrici (Lehmann, 1970), Apodemus insulaemus (Tokuda, 1939 and 1941), Apodemus istrianus (Kryštufek, 1985), Apodemus kahmanni (Malec and Storch, 1963) Apodemus karelicus (Ehrström, 1914), Apodemus maculatus (Bechstein, 1801), Apodemus mantchuricus (Thomas, 1898), Apodemus nicolskii (Charlemagne, 1933), Apodemus nikolskii (Migouline, 1927), Apodemus ningpoensis (Swinhoe, 1870), Apodemus ognevi (Johansen, 1923), Apodemus pallescens (Johnson and Jones, 1955), Apodemus pallidior (Thomas, 1908), Apodemus pratensis (Ockskay, 1831), Apodemus rubens (Oken, 1816), Apodemus septentrionalis (Ognev, 1924), Apodemus tianschanicus (Ognev, 1940) and Apodemus volgensis (Kuznetzov, 1944).

Characteristics

The upper parts of the striped field mouse are grayish brown with a rusty tint and there is a prominent mid-dorsal black stripe. The underparts are paler and grayish. The ears and eyes are relatively small. The body length reaches 126 millimeters and the tail length reaches 90 millimeters and it weighs up to 50 grams.

Ecology

The striped field mouse excavates a short burrow with a nesting chamber at a shallow depth. It is nocturnal during the summer but mainly diurnal in the winter. It lives in forests, cornfields and other agricultural land, uncultivated land, boundary strips, gullies, ravines and gardens. In the winter it takes up occupation in haystacks, storehouses and dwellings. Its diet varies and includes green parts of plants, roots, seeds, berries, nuts and insects. There are 3 to 5 broods in a year with an average of 6 young per litter and the population can build up rapidly in a good season. Limiting factors include frequent torrential rains during a warm season, early soil freezing and predation.