Order Rodentia - Family Muridae
Author
Guy G. Musser
Author
Michael D. Carleton
text
1993
Smithsonian Institution Press
Washington and London
Editor
Don E. Wilson
Editor
DeeAnn M. Reeder
Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition)
501
755
book chapter
http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7353098
1-56098-217-9
7353098
Myopus
Miller, 1910
.
Smithson. Mise. Coll., 52:497
.
TYPE SPECIES:
Myodes schisticolor
Lilljeborg, 1844
.
COMMENTS: Tribe
Lemmini
. Conventionally treated as a genus until
Chaline (1972)
regarded the differences in molar pattern between
schisticolor
and
Lemmus
to only reflect specific-level distinctions (also see
Chaline and
Mein
, 1979
;
Chaline et al., 1989
).
Koenigswald and Martin (1984)
also cited molar-pattern similarity for their allocation of
Myopus
to a subgenus of
Lemmus
.
Niethammer and Henttonen (1982)
and
Pavlinov and Rossolimo (1987)
, however, maintained the generic segregation of
Myopus
,
as we do here.
Lemmus
and
Myopus
share certain dental resemblances, but they are readily distinguished by other features that have not been addressed in the context of assessing the interrelationship of forms comprising these genus-group taxa. In our opinion, the phenotypically restricted character set mustered from a paleontological perspective is insufficient to falsify the hypothesis that
schisticolor
represents a monophyletic group separate from species of
Lemmus
.