Microtus chrotorrhinus Miller 1894

Microtus chrotorrhinus Miller 1894, Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 26: 190.

Type Locality: USA, New Hampshire, Coos Co., Mt Washington, head of Tuckerman's Ravine, 5300 ft (1615 m).

Vernacular Names: Rock Vole.

Synonyms: Microtus carolinensis Komarek 1932; Microtus ravus Bangs 1898 .

Distribution: S Labrador south through S Quebec and Ontario, Canada, to NE Minnesota, N New York, and N New England states, USA; isolated segments in the C (S New York, NE Pennsylvania) and S Appalachian Mtns (W Maryland to E Tennessee and W North Carolina).

Conservation: IUCN – Data Deficient as M. c. ravus, Lower Risk (nt) as M. c. carolinensis, otherwise Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: Although conventionally viewed as closely related to (Anderson, 1960), if not conspecific with (Hall and Kelson, 1959), M. xanthognathus, morphological, chromosomal, and molecular information reveals their more distant kinship (Bailey, 1900; Conroy and Cook, 2000 a; Guilday, 1982; R. A. Martin, 1973, 1979; Rausch and Rausch, 1974). The expanded definition of the subgenus Aulacomys (= M. chrotorrhinus, M. longicaudus, M. richardsoni, M. xanthognathus) as conceived by Zagorodnyuk (1990) is decidedly polyphyletic on parsimony and likelihood trees generated from mitochondrial DNA sequences (Conroy and Cook, 2000 a). Genic variation evaluated by Kilpatrick and Crowell (1985). See Kirkland and Jannett (1982, Mammalian Species, 180).