Abstract
We reviewed the available records on aberrantly coloured fat dormice Glis glis and are reporting on two recent cases of flavistic males. We identified five colour variants among nearly 11,000 dormice from throughout their range in Europe and Asia (of these 6174 from Slovenia and Croatia, and 3493 from the Czech Republic). Flavistic dormice come from Slovenia and Czechia (two cases each) while all the remaining colour variants were recorded in Slovenia between 1860 and 2012: melanistic (20 inds.), albino (7 inds.), isabellinus (4 inds.), and individuals with white tail stripes (five cases). The two flavistic individuals from Czechia were captured during a demographic study. Interestingly, the aberrant pelage was gained by both males later in life as in the years of first encounter they had the typical greyish coat colouration.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Igor Magál, Márie Mozgová, Stanislav Chlebus, Monika Kukalová, Vladislav Holec and Michaela Pupíková for their help with field work in Czechia and to Andrej Hudoklin, Stane Kumelj, Marjan Zavodnik, Andrej Zavodnik, and other traditional dormice hunters in Slovenia for providing information and specimens. Claudia Bieber, Joanna Fietz, and Rimvydas Juškaitis kindly shared their observations on pelage in their study populations. Access to museum collections was granted by (abc) Petr Benda (National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic), Alexandra N. Davydova (Zoological Institute and Zoological Museum, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia), Linda Gordon (National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, USA), Barbara Herzig-Straschil (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna, Austria), Rainer Hutterer (Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, Bonn, Germany), Paula Jenkins (Natural History Museum London, UK), Richard Kraft (Zoologisches Staatssammlung München, Munich, Germany), Katrin Krohmann (Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Frankfurt a. M., Germany), Milan Paunović (Natural History Museum of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia), and †William Stanley (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, USA). Karolyn Close improved English and style. This study was partly supported by grant scheme for graduate students (IGA PrF) of Palacký University.
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