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
Alticola lemminus
(Miller, 1898)
.
Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci.
Philadelphia
, 1898:369
.
TYPE LOCALITY:
Siberia, Bering Strait, Plover
Bay
, Kelsey Station
.
DISTRIBUTION: NE Siberia from
Chukotka
area west through the Anadyr region to mouth of
River
Lena, and south throughout the Lena basin.
COMMENTS: Subgenus
Aschizomys
.
Corbet (1978c)
transferred the species to
Eothenomys
,
but Russian workers refered
lemminus
to
Alticola
(
Gromov and Polyakov, 1977
;
Ognev, 1964
;
Pavlinov and Rossolimo, 1987
). Earlier, Hinton (1926:279) recognized
Aschizomys
but speculated that the species "will prove to be a member of the
E. rufocanus
group."
Miller (1940a:94)
reexamined the
holotype
and identified it as "nothing more than an alcohol-discolored specimen of the extreme East Asian representative of
Clethrionomys rufocanus."
Based on our inspection of the
holotype
of
lemminus,
we endorse
Ognev's (1964)
allocation to
Alticola,
subgenus
Aschizomys,
and are impressed by its diagnostic features. Significant chromosomal and morphological differences between samples of
A. lemminus
from
Chukotka
and Yakutia regions led
Bykova et al. (1978)
to speculate that
“lemminus"
may be a composite of two species.