Microtus fortis Büchner, 1889

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 : 521

Microtus fortis Büchner, 1889 . Wiss. Res. Przewalski's Cent.- Asien. Reisen, Zool., I:(Säugeth.), p. 99.

TYPE LOCALITY: China, Nei Mongol, Ordos Desert, Huang Ho Valley, Sujan .

DISTRIBUTION: Transbaikalia and Amur region south through Nei Mongol and E China to lower Yangtse Valley and Fujian (see Kovalskaya et al., 1988).

SYNONYMS: calamarum, dolichocephalus , fujianensis, michnoi , pelliceus , uliginosus.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Alexandromys . Geographic variation in chromosomal traits and its significance was reported by Kovalskaya et al. (1988; 1991). Most researchers view this species as a close phylogenetic relative of M. mongolicus (Meier, 1983; Radjabli et al., 1984). Zagorodnyuk (1990) listed M. fortis as the only member of its species group and related to the M. middendorffi group, which contains M. middendorffi , M. miurus , M. mongolicus , and M. sachalinensis . Reviewed by Corbet (1978c) and Gromov and Polyakov (1977).