Apodemus ponticus Sviridenko, 1936

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 : 572

Apodemus ponticus Sviridenko, 1936 . Abs. Works Zool. Inst. Moscow State Univ., 3:103.

TYPE LOCALITY: N Caucasus, Chernomorski Dist., (Black Sea) Olgino Village .

DISTRIBUTION: From shore of Azov Sea through Ciscaucasia, south through Caucasus into Armenia, E Turkey, Iraq, and possibly NW Iran; limits unknown. Parts of the Russian distribution were mapped by Vereshchagin (1967; as fulvipectus ), Mezhzherin (1991), and Vorontsov et al. (1992).

SYNONYMS: argyropuli, argyropuloi, brevicauda , parvus , persicus , planicola, samaricus, samariensis, saxatilis .

COMMENTS: Subgenus Sylvaemus . The names above have been associated with A. flavicollis ( Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951; Harrison and Bates, 1991), but they identify samples of A. ponticus which is a distinct species ( Bobrinskii et al., 1944; Mezhzherin, 1991; O. Rossolimo, in litt.; Vereshchagin, 1967:510; Vorontsov et al., 1992). True flavicollis does not occur in the Caucasus and parts of the M East. The names argyropuli Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951, and argyropuloi Heptner, 1948 (see Harrison and Bates, 1991) were proposed to replace parvus .