32. Eastern Broad-toothed Field, Mouse Apodemus (Sylvaemus) mystacinus (Danford & Alston, 1877)

(IUCN Red List: LC)

Distribution: Common and confined to the mountain foothills and wooded steppes of the coastal and southwestern regions. (Fig. 38)

Previous records: Mount Hermon (Allen 1915), Kafroun and Al-Qaryatein (Aharoni 1932), Qastal Maaf and Slenfeh (Lehmann 1965), Kasab (Lewis et al. 1967), Al-Karnah and Ain Arab (Shehab et al. 1999), Kharabow (Shehab 2005), Abu Qubays and Al-Furunlok (Daoud & Khalil 2009a, b); Ain Arab, Al-Bargasha, Serghaya, Jubata Forest (Shehab et al. 2018).

Recent record: Al-Kreem (2021).

Remarks: A craniometric study by Vohralík et al. (2002) retrieved poor support for the subspecific status of A. mystacinus while a phylogeographic analysis inferred the occurrence of a single lineage in Syria, which is widespread across Anatolia, except for its southwestern parts (Michaux et al. 2005).