Arvicola amphibius (LINNAEUS, 1758)

Masini, Federico, Maul, Lutz C., Abbazzi, Laura, Petruso, Daria & Savorelli, Andrea, 2020, Independent Water Vole (Mimomys Savini, Arvicola: Rodentia, Mammalia) Lineages In Italy And Central Europe, Fossil Imprint 76 (1), pp. 59-83 : 62

Arvicola amphibius group

Arvicola amphibius (resp. cited as A. terrestris ) is reported from the majority of Last Glacial Italian sites ( Kotsakis et al. 2003). Its first occurrence apparently precedes the Last Interglacial. A. amphibius and Arvicola sp. were found in several pre-Eemian localities of Italy ( Kotsakis et al. 2003, Sala and Masini 2007). Fossil finds of A. amphibius are reported from all over the peninsula, with the exception of southern Apulia. A. amphibius is absent from Sardinia and is reported only from the early-mid Holocene in Sicily ( Tagliacozzo 1993, Catalisano and Sarà 1995, Agnesi et al. 2000, López-García et al. 2013). The latter authors gave a 14 C dating of 3,950 ± 35 years to the youngest occurrence of Arvicola at Vallone Inferno, Northern Sicily. The morphology of A. amphibius is imperfectly known like that of Arvicola mosbachensis , since only a very few samples are properly figured and described ( Maul et al. 1998b), whereas almost all the other occurrences are simple quotations in faunal lists. The recently published finds of water vole from Cava Muracci in Latium (dated at MIS 3) are referred to A. italicus by Gatta et al. (1998) who, however, do not report information on SDQ of these specimens.