Sorex minutus Linnaeus, 1766

Rainer Hutterer, 1993, Order Insectivora, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 69-130 : 117-118

Sorex minutus Linnaeus, 1766 . Syst. Nat., 12th ed., 1: 73.

TYPE LOCALITY: "Yenisei"; restricted by Pavlinov and Rossolimo (1987:15) to "Krasnoyarskii kr., Krasnoyarsk." According to Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951:47), Linnaeus' name is based on Laxmann's ms. of Sibir. Briefe, and the type locality is Barnaul, Russia .

DISTRIBUTION: Europe to Yenesei River and Lake Baikal, south to Altai and Tien Shan Mtns; populations of Nepal and China have been alternatively identified as minutus or thibetanus ; populations of Turkey and the Caucasus as minutus or volnuchini ; populations of Kashmir and N Pakistan as minutus , planiceps , or thibetanus .

SYNONYMS: abnormis, barabensis, becki, canaliculatus, carpetanus, exiguus, exilis, gmelini, gymnurus, heptapotamicus, hibernicus, insulaebellae, kastchenkoi, lucanius, melanderi, minimus, pumilio, pumilus, pygmaeus, rusticus, stroganovi, tschuktschorum.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Sorex . Formerly included gracillimus , which is now accepted as specifically distinct; see comments therein. Corbet (1978c) included also planiceps and thibetanus ; but see Dolgov and Hoffmann (1977) and Hutterer (1979). May include volnuchini , see comments therein. The European populations of minutus were revised by Hutterer (1990).