Order Rodentia - Family Cricetidae
Author
Wilson, Don E.
Author
Reeder, DeeAnn
text
2005
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2
955
1189
book chapter
0-8018-8221-4
10.5281/zenodo.7316535
Lemmus
Link 1795
Lemmus
Link 1795
,
Beitr. Naturgesch., 1 (2): 75
.
Type Species:
Mus lemmus
Linnaeus 1758
Synonyms:
Brachyurus
Fischer 1813
;
Hypudaeus
Illiger 1811
;
Lemnus
Gray 1825
;
Mirus
Brunner 1938
;
Miromus
Brunner 1951
.
Species and subspecies:
5 species:
Species
Lemmus amurensis
Vinogradov 1924
Species
Lemmus lemmus
(
Linnaeus 1758
)
Species
Lemmus portenkoi
Tchernyavsky 1967
Species
Lemmus sibiricus
(
Kerr 1792
)
Species
Lemmus trimucronatus
Richardson 1825
Discussion:
Lemmini. Nominative genus of
Miller's (1896)
classic tribe
Lemmi
, then including
Dicrostonyx
(see that account). Distinctiveness still recognized within a tribe, including
Myopus
and
Synaptomys
, a clade believed to represent an early line of arvicoline evolution (
Abramson, 1993
;
Carleton, 1981
;
Chaline and Graf, 1988
;
Graf, 1982
;
Gromov and Polyakov, 1977
;
Hinton, 1926
a
;
Hooper and Hart, 1962
;
Jarrell and Fredga, 1993
;
Koenigswald, 1980
). The monophyly of true lemmings, excluding
Dicrostonyx
, is also supported by recent cladistic evaluations of allozymes (
Mezhzherin et al., 1995
), nuclear repetitive DNA elements (
Modi, 1996
), and mitochrondrial DNA sequences (
Conroy and Cook, 1999
).
Myodes
Pallas, 1811
, usually placed in the synonymy of
Lemmus
(e.g.,
Hall, 1981
;
Hinton, 1926
a
;
Miller, 1896
), is the oldest name for
Clethrionomys
(see that account); also see account of
Myopus
, once treated as a subgenus of
Lemmus
.
Old World taxa covered by Corbet (1978, 1984),
Gromov and Polyakov (1977)
,
Pavlinov and Rossolimo (1987)
, and
Gromov and Erbajeva (1995)
; biology, distributions, and taxonomic arrangements of New and Old World species summarized by
Stenseth and Ims (1993)
. Fossil history reviewed by Koenigswald and L. D. Martin (1984) and
Fejfar and Repenning (1998)
; zoogeography discussed by
Rausch and Rausch (1975
b
)
. All sampled
Lemmus
have 2n = 50, with autosomes similar to those in
Synaptomys
(
Jarrell and Fredga, 1993
;
Zima and Kral, 1984
a
). In an important series of reports, Fedorov (1999) and
Fedorov et al. (1999
a
,
b
) assessed mitochondrial DNA variation among co-occurring samples of
Lemmus
and
Dicrostonyx
to explore circumpolar phylogeographic patterns and discussed the geographic incongruence of genetic differentiation within the two lemming genera.
The alpha taxonomy of true lemmings is complicated. The genus is clearly more diverse than the single Holarctic species proposed by Sidorowicz (1960, 1964). Two (
Pokrovski et al., 1984
;
Rausch and Rausch, 1975
b
), three (
Musser and Carleton, 1993
;
Pavlinov and Rossolimo, 1987
), four (
Gromov and Erbajeva, 1995
;
Honacki et al., 1982
;
Jarrell and Fredga, 1993
;
Pavlinov and Rossolimo, 1998
;
Pavlinov et al., 1995
a
), or five (
Corbet and Hill, 1991
) species have been recognized, and the senior names employed and synonymies allocated among them are inconsistent or contradictory. We distill this information and evidence supplied in recent studies as the basis for recognizing five allopatric species
.