The traps that Kurt Vandegrift uses to capture mice in the Penn State Stone Valley Forest are like waiting rooms at a doctor’s office.
The white-footed mice sit in them before a check-up that runs the gamut — from a tick and flea inspection to a blood sample being taken. Then the Peromyscus leucopus are tagged with a passive induced transponder tag that provides each with an 8-digit digital identification number before being released back into the wild.
The goal isn’t just learning about the health of the mice; it’s gaining insight into the viruses they carry that can transmit diseases to people — think hantavirus and Lyme disease.
The work — Vandegrift’s team has checked, tagged, sampled and released more than 50,000 mice since starting the project in 2003 — is being done in Stone Valley Forest, a 6,775-acre property primarily in Barree Township, Huntingdon County, that spills into neighboring Jackson and West townships. While the Stone Valley land is perhaps best known for outdoor recreation that is free to the public, it also serves as a petri dish for faculty and student research.
“The most visible part of the forest is the Shavers Creek Environmental Center and the lake and cabins, but there are also nearly 7,000 acres of forest around it that make the research that goes on possible,” said Joe Harding, who oversees the property that is part of the College of Agricultural Sciences.