Chionomys nivalis (Martins, 1842)

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 : 507

Chionomys nivalis (Martins, 1842) . Rev. Zool. Paris, p. 331.

TYPE LOCALITY: Switzerland, Berner Oberland, Faulhorn .

DISTRIBUTION: Mountains of Europe from Spain through the Alps to Tatra, the Carpathians, Balkans, Mt Olympus and Pindus Range, east to W Caucasus, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Transcaucasia, Kopet Dag, and Zagros Mtns of Iran (see Krapp, 1982«, for European range and Harrison and Bates, 1991, for Middle East). Records in Greece were provided by Niethammer (1987b).

SYNONYMS: abulensis, aleco, alpinus , aquitanius, cedrorum, dementievi, herntonis, lebrunii , leucurus (of Gerbe, 1852, not Blyth, 1863), loginovi, ntalyi, mirhanreini , nivicola , olympius, petrophilus , pontius , radnensis , satunini, spitzenbergerae, trialeticus, ulpius , wagneri.

COMMENTS: European populations reviewed by Krapp (1982a). Intraspecific morphological variation among Carpathian samples were analyzed by Kratochvil (1981) along with a review of European and Turkish subspecies. The subspecies spitzenbergerae denotes a population from S Turkey that was previously identified as C. gud ( Nadachowski, 1990b) , a species which is known only from NE Turkey where it is sympatric with C. nivalis . Analyses of vertical distribution of C. nivalis in Yugoslavia ( Krystufek and Kovacic, 1989) and geographic variation among samples from Austria and Yugoslavia ( Krystufek, 1990) amplify knowledge of morphological variation within the species. Chromosomal variation in Bulgarian populations was reported by Peshev and Belcheva (1979). Allozyme variation and differentiation among samples of C. nivalis from N Italy and Israel were reported by Filippucci et al. (1991), who also noted that the Israeli population from Mt. Hermon (herntonis) might represent a separate species.