Alticola (Aschizomys) lemminus Miller 1898

• Main Authors: Wilson, Don E., Reeder, DeeAnn
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: The Johns Hopkins University Press 2005
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Chordata; Mammalia; Rodentia; Cricetidae; Alticola; Alticola lemminus; Bering Strait; Chukotka; Chukotka Peninsula; Kamchatka; laptev; Laptev Sea; Siberia
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11356925; http://treatment.plazi.org/id/3C27DBB5CE5CE3F0362BCFA9521DEC0C

Alticola (Aschizomys) lemminus Miller 1898 Alticola (Aschizomys) lemminus Miller 1898, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1898: 369. Type Locality: Russia, Siberia, Bering Strait, Plover Bay, Kelsey Station. Vernacular Names: Lemming Mountain Vole. Synonyms: Alticola (Aschizomys) lemniscus (Satunin 1908); Alticola (Aschizomys) vicina Portenko 1963; Alticola (Aschizomys) yakutensis Vasil’eva 1993. Distribution: NE Siberia from Chukotskiy (Chukotka) Peninsula to Kamchatka, westward through the Kolyma Plateau (Khrebei Kolymskiv) to N, C, and S Yakutskaya (the River Lena basin from the Laptev Sea Coast to the Olekma River). Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc). Discussion: Subgenus Aschizomys . Stature as species and genus-group allocation highly varied. Retained in Aschizomys as genus by Ellerman (1941). Corbet (1978 c ) transferred lemminus to Eothenomys , but Russian workers continue to refer it to Alticola (Gromov and Polyakov, 1977; Ognev, 1964; Pavlinov and Rossolimo, 1987). Earlier, Hinton (1926 a :279) recognized Aschizomys but speculated that the species is a member of the Myodes rufocanus group; Miller (1940 a :94) identified the holotype as "nothing more than an alcohol-discolored specimen of the extreme East Asian representative of Myodes rufocanus ," an opinion followed by Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951). Some have treated lemminus as a subspecies of A. macrotis (Bolshakov et al., 1985; Gromov and Baranova, 1981; Gromov and Erbajeva, 1995; Gromov and Polyakov, 1977), whereas others have maintained the two as separate (Musser and Carleton, 1993; Pavlinov and Rossolimo, 1987; Pavlinov et al., 1995 a ). Based on renewed inspection of the holotype, we endorse Ognev’s (1964) allocation of lemminus to Alticola , subgenus Aschizomys , and reemphasize its impressive diagnostic features as a species. The status of included populations requires additional study. Significant chromosomal and morphological differences between samples from Chukotka and Yakutskaya led Bykova et al. (1978) to speculate that " ...