Cricetus cricetus (Linnaeus, 1758) . Syst. Nat., 10th ed., 1:60.

TYPE LOCALITY: Germany .

DISTRIBUTION: From Belgium across C Europe, W Siberia and N Kazakhstan to the upper Yenesei and Altai region and NW China (Xinjiang).

SYNONYMS: albus, babylonicus, canescens, frumentarius, fulvus, fuscidorsis, germanicus, jeudii, latycranius, nehringi, niger, nigricans (Lacépède, 1799, not Brandt, 1832), polychroma, rufescens, stavropolicus, tauricus, tomensis, varius, vulgaris .

COMMENTS: Taxonomy, morphology, distribution, karyotype, and biology of European populations reviewed by Niethammer (1982b), who also noted that closest relatives are extinct species described from Pleistocene samples. More recent analyses of morphological variability among European samples were reported by Grulich (1987, 1991, and references therein). Significance of geographic range in Netherlands was discussed by Lenders and Pelzers (1982).