Lemmiscus Thomas, 1912 . Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 8, 9:401.

TYPE SPECIES: Arvicola curtata Cope, 1868 .

COMMENTS: Named as a subgenus of Lagurus to segregate New World sagebrush voles from Old World steppe voles. Davis (1939) underscored the morphological separation between New and Old World forms and raised Lemmiscus to a genus, a view supported by Carleton's (1981) study of gastric anatomy. Subsequent faunal studies and checklists have variously listed Lemmiscus as a genus (Carleton and Musser, 1984; Gromov and Polyakov, 1977) or as a subgenus of Lagurus (Hall, 1981; Honacki et al., 1982). Certain morphological traits associate Lemmiscus with Microtus (Carleton, 1981; Davis, 1939), but chromosomal banding patterns provide little resolution of its phylogenetic affinity (Modi, 1987).