Microtus agrestis (Linnaeus, 1761)

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 518

Microtus agrestis (Linnaeus, 1761) . Fauna Suecica, 2nd ed., p. 11.

TYPE LOCALITY: Sweden, Uppsala .

DISTRIBUTION: Britain and nearby small islands, Scandinavia, and France east through Europe and Siberia to Lena River; south to Pyrennes of France and Spain, and to N Portugal; east to N Yugoslavia, S Urals, Altai Mtns, NW China (Xinjiang), and Lake Baikal region ( Corbet, 1978c; Krapp and Niethammer, 1982).

SYNONYMS: angustifrons, arcturus , argyropoli, argyropuli, argyropuloi, armoricanus, bailloni , campestris , britannicus , carinthiacus, enez-groezi, estiae, exsul , fiona, gregarius , hirta , insularis , intermedia , latifrons , levenedii, luch, macgillivrayi , miai, mongol, neglectus , nigra , nigricans , ognevi, orioecus, pannonicus , punctus, rozianus , rufa , scaloni, tridentinus, wettsteini.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Agricola , agrestis species group sensu Zagorodnyuk (1990) . Although regarded as conspecific with North American M. pennsylvanicus on morphological grounds ( Klimkiewicz, 1970), chomosomal differences led Vorontsov and Lyapunova (1986) to conclude that their similarities represented convergence, not phylogenetic alliance; instead they remarked upon possible closer relationship of M. agrestis to North American M. chrotorrhinus . Zagorodnyuk (1990) emphasized this evolutionary distance by placing M. pennsylvanicus in the subgenus Mynomes . Chromosomal data summarized and reviewed by Zima and Krâl (1984a); European populations reviewed by Krapp and Niethammer (1982).