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Abstract:We addressed the species taxonomy of five-toed jerboas (Allactaga, subgenus Paralactaga) in the Middle East by applying molecular markers (cytochrome b and a partial 16S rRNA). The study consisted of 17 specimens from eight localities in the Middle East, representing both species: Allactaga euphratica and Allactaga williamsi. The phylogenetic reconstructions yielded three highly divergent lineages, which failed to conform to the recent taxonomy of Paralactaga. The first lineage (williamsi lineage) encompassed all the samples of A. williamsi from Turkey and Iran and also the specimens of A. euphratica from Lebanon. The haplotypes of A. euphratica were arranged into two lineages, which showed strong geographic associations. One lineage contained samples from Harran in Turkey and from Iran, while all the samples from Syria clustered in another lineage. The pairwise Kimura twoparameter values suggested similar divergences between the three lineages and were within the range reported for a sister species of rodents. Our results point to a cryptic species in A. euphratica and also provide evidence of the expanded range of A. williamsi further south to Lebanon.

Apodemus sylvaticus stankovici, described from the topographically rough landscape of the western Balkan glacial refugium, was recently proposed as being either a junior synonym of Apodemus flavicollis or a species on its own right. To untangle this taxonomic vagueness, we sequenced complete cytochrome b gene in 28 field mice collected at 12 locations in the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, western Macedonia and northern Greece. Samples yielded 27 new haplotypes which clustered into two distinct groups. One of these clades also included the reference haplotype of A. flavicollis, while another cluster emerged as being identical with the reference sample for A. sylvaticus. As is common in Apodemus, both species retrieved in our analysis were characterized by low levels of intraspecific variation (0.4-0.9%) as opposed to a high level of differentiation between them (8.0-10.0%); therefore, the taxonomic classification of our material was without doubt. We found no evidence regarding the presence of an additional cryptic species in the mountains of the western Balkans. The very similar values of genetic variability in the two species imply their common evolutionary history of a long-term coexistence in the western Balkan refugium.

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Mesotriton alpestris lacusnigri is regarded as being an extinct subspecies of the Alpine newt endemic to a small fishless alpine lake calledČrno jezero (Black Lake) in the Julian Alps in Slovenia. To re-assess its taxonomic position we sequenced fragments of two mitochondrial genes (309 bp of cytochrome b and 315 bp of 16S rRNA) of two museum specimens collected in 1953. Specimens of the ssp. lacusnigri yielded two new haplotypes which formed a monophyletic group within a cluster of other Slovenian and central European haplotypes of ssp. alpestis. The name lacusnigri is therefore merely a junior synonym of the nominotypical subspecies and should be removed from red data listing. Our study highlights the outstanding value of natural history collections as baselines for contemporary biodiversity assessments.Fish introductions in newt ponds are the major cause of declining intraspecific diversity in several European newts. These activities peaked over the last three decades and eradicated all local subspecies of the Alpine newt in southeastern Europe (Denoel, Dzukic and Kalezic, 2005). One among subspecies which was lost to fish stocking is Mesotriton alpestris lacusnigri (Seliškar and Pehani, 1935), reportedly endemic to a small fishless alpine lake calleď Crno jezero in the Julian Alps of Slovenia. This taxon attracted surprisingly little attention and its taxonomic position was never assessed following formal taxonomic recognition in the 1930s. Also noteworthy, the ssp. lacusnigri was not included in a recent comprehensive phylogeographic assessment of the Alpine newt based on molecular markers (Sotiropoulos et al., 2007); hence its taxonomic status and evolutionary relations with other taxa and phylogeographic lineages remain obscure. On the other hand, recent studies (Pabijan, Babik and Rafiński, 2005; Sotiropoulos et al.