Arvicola Lacepede, 1799 . Tab. Div. Subd. Orders Genres Mammifères, p. 10.

TYPE SPECIES: Mus amphibius Linnaeus, 1758 (= Mus terrestris Linnaeus, 1758).

SYNONYMS: Alviceola, Hemiotomys, Ochetomys, Paludicola, Praticola .

COMMENTS: Excludes the North American Microtus richardsoni (see account of that species), which was placed in Arvicola by Hooper and Hart (1962). Generic reviews were provided by Corbet (1978c, 1984) and Gromov and Polyakov (1977), who recognized only two extant species, A. sapidus and A. terrestris . Earlier, Miller (1912a) defined seven species ( amphibius, illyricus, italicus, musignani, sapidus, scherman, and terrestris) and Hinton (1926) recognized four ( amphibius, sapidus, scherman, and terrestris). We follow Corbet's (1978c) unsatisfactory arrangement pending careful systematic revision of the genus, which will likely reflect a classification more similar to that of Hinton (1926). Arvicola is phylogenetically close to Microtus (Burgos et al., 1989; Chaline and Graf, 1988; Graf, 1982). Heinrich (1990) hypothesized that it evolved from the extinct Mimomys, a view already presented by Hinton (1926), and Rekovets (1990) summarized the fossil history leading to the modern groups of Arvicola .