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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter September 15, 2009

Distribution of the Southern birch mouse (Sicista subtilis) in East-Poland: Morphometric variations in discrete European populations of superspecies S. subtilis

  • Tamás Cserkész , Ignacy Kitowski , Krzystof Czochra and Mikhail Rusin
From the journal Mammalia

Abstract

We report new records for the inadequately known Southern birch mouse Sicista subtilis in Poland. This species was found in Poland in 1994 by catching a live specimen by hand and to date there has been no other data on this species. The Polish population is most likely an isolated population of S. subtilis but its taxonomic status has not been studied yet. According to our results, it is a morphometric variation or a new subspecies of S. subtilis. Its craniometrical size is in general smaller than that of the Ukrainian “core” population. Morphometrically, it is similar to the S. subtilistrizona living in Hungary. It is probable that the size reduction and the microevolutionary divergence in morphometry most likely result from a long isolation in the case of trizona or a shorter isolation of the Polish population. However, the geographic isolation of the Polish subpopulations in the Lublin region has not been adequate to produce significant morphologic variation in the crania. Hypothetically, the Polish specimens with smaller skulls may also be affected by differences in prey base, which is reflected in the different habitats. The craniometrical characteristics of the geographically most isolated Hungarian trizona population are the smallest in the superspecies S. subtilis.


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Published Online: 2009-09-15
Published in Print: 2009-09-01

©2009 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin New York

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