Apodemus sylvaticus

Apodemus sylvaticus (Linnaeus, 1758). Syst. Nat., 10th ed., 1:62.

TYPE LOCALITY: Sweden, Uppsala.

DISTRIBUTION: Europe north to Scandinavia and east to NW Ukraine and N Byelorussia, and on many islands (Iceland, Britain, Ireland, numerous nearby isls, most Mediterranean isls); see map in Niethammer (1978c:341). Also mountains of N Africa from Atlas Mtns in Morocco east across Algiers to Tunisia (see map in Kock and Felton, 1980).

SYNONYMS: albus, algirus, alpinus, bergensis, butei, callipides, candidus, celticus, chamaeropsis clanceyi, creticus, cumbrae, dichruroides, dichrurus, eivissensis, fiolagan, flaviventris, flavobrunneus, fridariensis, frumentariae, ghia, grandiculus, granti, hamiltoni, hayi, hebridensis, hermani, hessei, hirtensis, iconicus, ifranensis, ilvanus, intermedius, isabellinus, islandicus, kilikiae, krkensis, larus, leucocephalus, maclean, maximus, milleri, nesiticus, niger, parvus (Bechstein, 1793, not Argyropulo, 1941), pecchioli, rufescens, spadix, stankovici, tauricus, thuleo, tirae, turai, varius.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Sylvaemus. The geographic range as outlined here is primarily European and N African. Its occurrence as mapped by Corbet (1978c) east of Byelorussia and W Ukraine reflects ranges of other species (uralensis, fulvipectus, arianus, wardi, rusiges) once included within A. sylvaticus. Contrary to published records, A. sylvaticus is not part of the modern Israeli fauna (Filippucci et al., 1989), but is represented there by fossils from between 40,000 and 10,000 B.C. (Tchernov, 1979). The Arabian Peninsula record at Qatar is based on Mus (Kock and Nader, 1990). Biochemical (Byrne et al., 1990; Fernandes et al., 1991; Gemmeke, 1981) and morphometric (Alcantara, 1991; Murback, 1979) intrapopulational analyses provided results of differentiation within species and change in its evolutionary history (see Berry, 1973, and references therein), as well as insular gigantism (Libois and Fons, 1990). Morphometric contrasts between A. sylvaticus and A. flavicollis in context of evolutionary divergence reported by Hedges (1969), Mezhzherin and Lashkova (1992) and Van der Straeten and Van der Straeten-Harrie (1977); chromosomal and biochemical (mtDNA) contrasts by Debrot and Mermod (1977), Hirning et al. (1989) and Tegelstrom and Jaarola (1989). European populations (virtually entire species) reviewed by Niethammer (1978c). North African populations reviewed by Kock and Felten (1980) and Kowalski and Rzebik-Kowalska (1991); the latter also point out that algirus Pomel, 1856 and chamaeropsis Loche, 1867 may refer to species of Mus or Gerbillus. Conspecificity of krkensis with A. sylvaticus was documented by Williams et al. (1980) and Dolan and Yates (1981).