Lemmus sibiricus (Kerr 1792)

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Cricetidae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 955-1189 : 987

Lemmus sibiricus (Kerr 1792)

[Mus] sibiricus Kerr 1792 , in: Linnaeus, Anim. Kingdom: 241.

Type Locality: Russia, Yamalo-Nenetskaya Nats. Okr., between Polar Ural Mtns and lower course of Ob River.

Vernacular Names: Siberian Brown Lemming.

Synonyms: Lemmus bungei Vinogradov 1924 ; Lemmus kittlitzi (Brandt 1845) ; Lemmus kittlitzi (Middendorf 1853) ; Lemmus minor ( Pallas 1811) ; Lemmus migratorius (Illiger 1815) ; Lemmus novosibiricus Vinogradov 1924 ; Lemmus obensis Brants 1827 ; Lemmus paulus G. M. Allen 1914 .

Distribution: Palearctic tundra landscapes—from Arkhangel region on eastern border of White Sea, W Russia, eastward to W border of the Lena River.

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: This species was formerly defined broadly to encompass not only most Palearctic forms but also North American taxa here retained as L. trimucronatus (see next). Within Eurasia, the geographic range was thought to extend eastward beyond the Lena River to the Kolymskaya region, E Siberia (e.g., Jarell and Fredga, 1993); however, phylogeographic patterns based on cytochrome b sequences substantiate a pronounced division between samples west ( L. sibiricus ) and east ( L. amurensis , see above) of the Lena River ( Fedorov et al., 1999 b), a frontier coincident with significant haplotype discontinuities among samples of Dicrostonyx ( Fedorov et al., 1999 a) . Fedorov et al. (1999 b) interpreted the level of sequence divergence to indicate cladogenesis prior to the last glaciation and implicated the formation of montane and continental ice sheets near the Lena River as the historical barrier driving this divergence. Lemmus sibiricus proper is genetically closely related to L. lemmus and possibly referrable to that species ( Fedorov et al., 1999 b; Jarrell and Fredga, 1993).