Microtus irani Thomas, 1921 . J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 27:581.

TYPE LOCALITY: Iran, Fars Prov., Shiraz, Bagh-i-Rezi .

DISTRIBUTION: E Turkey, N Syria, Lebanon, Israel, W Jordan, Cyrenaica in Libya, N Iraq, W and N Iran, and Kopet Dag Mtns in Turkmenistan.

SYNONYMS: mustersi, paradoxus, mystacinus .

COMMENTS: Subgenus Microtus, socialis species group sensu Zagorodnyuk (1990) . Pavlinov and Rossolimo (1987) listed M. irani in the subgenus Sumeriomys, a name not recognized by Zagorodnyuk (1990). Corbet (1978c) and Harrison and Bates (1991) included irani in M. socialis, but the two are distinct species as documented by Morlok (1978) and Kock and Nader (1983), who also noted that most records of M. guentheri from Syria, Lebanon, and Israel are M. irani and that philistinus may be an older name for irani . The isolated Lybian population was reviewed, under mustersi, by Ranck (1968). The status of paradoxus (from Kopet Dag Mtns) deserves reevaluation: Pavlinov and Rossolimo (1987) treated it as a synonym of irani but Zagorodnyuk (1990) maintained it as distinct.