Microtus miurus Osgood 1901

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Cricetidae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 955-1189 : 1007

Microtus miurus Osgood 1901

Microtus miurus Osgood 1901 , N. Amer. Fauna, 21: 64.

Type Locality: USA, Alaska, Cook Inlet, Turnagain Arm, head of Bear Creek in mountains near Hope City.

Vernacular Names: Singing Vole.

Synonyms: Microtus andersoni Rand 1945 ; Microtus cantator Anderson 1947 ; Microtus muriei Nelson 1931 ; Microtus oreas Osgood 1907 ; Microtus paneaki Rausch 1950 .

Distribution: Alaska, USA, except the central portion and Alaska Peninsula; eastwards through much of Yukon Territory to westernmost Northwest Territories and extreme NW British Columbia, Canada.

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: Subgenus indeterminate. Classically treated as a member of the subgenus Stenocranius (e.g., Hall, 1981; Miller and Kellogg, 1955), an association that purported close affinity to Old World M. gregalis (see that account); synonymized with same to form a Holarctic species by Rausch (1964) and Rausch and Rausch (1968). Other data convincingly argue their specific distinctiveness and distant kinship ( Anderson, 1960; Fedyk, 1970; Gromov and Polyakov, 1977; Vorontsov and Lyapunova, 1986), and phylogenetic studies of chromosomes ( Zagorodnyuk, 1990) and mitochondrial DNA sequences ( Conroy and Cook, 2000 a) require the removal of M. miurus (along with M. abbreviatus ) from Stenocranius proper. Zagorodnyuk (1990) had emphasized this divergence by placing M. miurus in the subgenus Alexandromys , M. middendorfii species group, along with M. mongolicus and M. sachalinensis . According to the results of Conroy and Cook (2000 a), M. miurus , and its sister species M. abbreviatus , originated early within the radiation of North American Microtus , apart from Palearctic species.