Talpa levantis transcaucasica Dahl, 1945

Kefelioğlu, Haluk, Kryštufek, Boris, Selçuk, Ahmet Yesari, Hutterer, Rainer & Astrin, Jonas J., 2020, Taxonomic revision of the Levant moles of Turkey (Mammalia: Talpidae), Bonn zoological Bulletin 69 (2), pp. 275-291 : 286-287

Talpa levantis transcaucasica Dahl, 1945

( Fig. 5c )

Talpa europaea transcaucasica Dahl, 1945: 48 . The year of publication on the cover page is 1944; with 1945 we follow Pavlinov & Rossolimo 1998: 8). Type locality (p. 49): “Окресности села Воскресеновски (Кироваканский р-н Арм. ССР) ... Высота 1845 м над уровнем моря [Surroundings of the village of Voskresenovka (Kirovakan district of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic) ... Altitude 1845 m above sea level]”. Since names of places changed since 1945, the type locality is now: Lermontovo (formerly Voskresenovka), Lori Province (formerly Kirovokan district), Armenia.

Talpa minima Deparma, 1959:31 . Type locality is “Сев.- Зап. КавкаЗ, верховья реки Белой, блиЗ поселка Хамышки, 500 м ур. м.” – [“north-western Caucasus, the upper stream of River Beloy, near the settlement Khamyshki, 500 m a. s. l.”] (from Borissenko et al. 2001: 164), Adygea (Adyghe) Republic, Russia. In Deparma 1960: 97, the type locality is cited as: “Chamischki am Oberlauf des Flusses Belaja; NW-Kaukasus; 500 m ü. M. [Meter über Meereshöhe = metres above sea level]”

T[alpa] o[rientalis] transcaucasica : Vereschagin, 1959:388.

T[alpa] h[ercegoviensis] minima : Kuzyakin, 1965:50.

T[alpa] c[aeca] minima : Gromov, Gureev, Novikov, Sokolov, Strelkov & Chapskiy, 1963:79.

T[alpa] l[evantis] minima : Sokolov & Tembotov, 1989:249.

T[alpa] l[evantis] transcaucasica : Sokolov & Tembotov, 1989:249. First use of current name combination.

T[alpa] transcaucasica : Demırtaş, Silsüpür, Searle, Bil- ton & Gündüz, 2020 (unpaginated early online release).

Diagnosis. Identical to the eastern sublineage of Demır- taş et al. (2020) and to the Eastern lineage of Talpa levantis as retrieved in this study through the phylogenetic analysis of the mitochondrial Cyt b gene. In our dataset, the subspecies transcaucasica has unique mutations in comparison with sequences of both the nominotypical subspecies and T. l. dogramacii new subspecies at the following positions of our Cyt b alignment (see Appendix 2): 42:T, 54:G, 162:G, 213:C, 219:T, 223:C, 225:A, 231:G, 246:T, 279:C, 396:A, 480:C, 603:T, 640:T, 651:C, 667:C, 675:G, 678:C, 858:G, 867:T, 913:T, 1008:T.

Description and comparison. Similar to the remaining subspecies and the differences are on average. For comparisons see under T. l. dogramacii ssp. nov. and the nominate subspecies.

Distribution. The north-eastern and eastern Black Sea coast, the Lesser Caucasus in north-eastern Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia, and the Greater Caucasus in Georgia and Russia.

Miscellaneous. Deparma published the taxonomic description and naming of Talpa minima in two papers, in Russian ( Deparma 1959) and in German ( Deparma 1960). This caused the inconsistency in reporting the year of publishing the name. While Russian authors consistently quoted 1959 ( Gureev 1979, Gromov et al. 1963, Kuzyakin 1965, Pavlinov & Rossolimo 1987, Sokolov & Tembotov 1989, Zaytsev et al. 2014), Western authors were aware only of the German version and cited 1960 ( Hutterer 2005).

Sokolov & Tembotov (1989) recognized minima as subspecifically distinct from transcaucasica . The former is smaller (mean CbL is 28.66 mm in males and 28.25 mm in females) and occupies the western Caucasus; the latter is larger (mean CbL is 30.12 mm in males and 30.02 mm in females) and lives in the north-central Piedmont of the Greater Caucasus and the eastern Lesser Caucasus (Sokolov & Tembotov 1989).

Talpa levantis dogramacii ssp. nov. Kefelioğlu,

Figures

Fig. 5. The 95% confidence ellipses for dispersion of scores of four operational taxonomic units of Talpa levantis onto the first two discriminant axes derived from discriminant factor analyses of log10-transformed cranial variables. The proportion of variance explained by an axis is in parentheses. The ellipse for the Lake Van sample is shown by a dashed line.