Meriones meridianus (Pallas, 1773)

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 : 557

Meriones meridianus (Pallas, 1773) . Reise Prov. Russ. Reichs., p. 702.

TYPE LOCALITY: Astrakhanskaya Oblast, Dosang (as restricted by Heptner, in Vinogradov et al., 1936, not Chaworth-Musters and Ellerman, 1947 —see Pavlinov and Rossolimo, 1987) .

DISTRIBUTION: From Lower Don River and N of the Caucasus to Mongolia and the Chinese provinces of Xinjiang, Qinghai, Shanxi and Hebei, south to E Iran and N Afghanistan. The isolated segment in Armenia mentioned by Corbet (1978c) refers to M. dahli (see that account).

SYNONYMS: auceps , brevicaudatus , buechneri , cryptorhinus , fulvus , heptneri, jei, karelini, lepturus , littoralis , massagetes, muleiensis, nogaiorum, penicilliger, psamntophilus, roborowskii , shitkovi, tropini, urianchaicus , uschtaganicus, zhitkovi.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Pallasiomys . The significance of intraspecific chromosomal variation among Russian samples was reported by Korobitsyna and Kartavtseva (1988). Utilizing several sets of data, including results from hybridization studies, Dyatlov and Avanyan (1987) tested conspecificity of the subspecies meridianus , nogaiorum, and dahli , and concluded that nogaiorum should be considered a semispecies and dahli a species (see that account). We retain nogaiorum in M. meridianus pending unequivocable results demonstrating its evolutionary status. The Xinjiang population was discussed by Ma et al. (1987).