As the most species-rich group of Palaearctic rodents, voles and lemmings are frequently used in various research endeavours of fundamental and applied significance. The present work integrates achievements of the genomic era with the traditional taxonomy and provides an authoritative and up-to-date taxonomic guide to the animal group which is of great interest to experts engaged in medical zoology, epidemiology, biostratigraphy, zooarchaeology, evolutionary research, population ecology, animal systematics, biodiversity conservation, museum collection management and many more biological subdisciplines. The text is supplemented by 331 illustrations and over one thousand references. Depicted are morphological details of skull and dentition of each of the 128 species and their distributions are mapped in detail. The book will allow the user to interpret intelligently and cautiously the interrelationships among species of voles and lemmings and to follow the anticipated taxonomic change with a critical eye.

Population fluctuations of 13 rodent species in 5 habitats were monitored for 16 years in the central Negev Desert, Israel. Analysis of factors affec

We tested the hypothesis that compositional and/or phylogenetic dissimilarity of host assemblages affect compositional and/or phylogenetic dissimilarity of parasite assemblages, to different extents depending on scale, using regional surveys of fleas parasitic on small mammals from 4 biogeographical realms. Using phylogenetic community dissimilarity metric, we calculated the compositional and phylogenetic dissimilarity components between all pairs of host and parasite communities within realms and hemispheres. We then quantified the effect of compositional or phylogenetic dissimilarity in host regional assemblages, and geographical distance between assemblages, on the compositional or phylogenetic dissimilarity of flea regional assemblages within a realm, respectively. The compositional dissimilarity in host assemblages strongly affected compositional dissimilarity in flea assemblages within all realms and within both hemispheres. However, the effect of phylogenetic dissimilarity of host assemblages on that of flea assemblages was mostly confined to the Neotropics and Nearctic, but was detected in both the Old and New World at the higher scale, possibly because of phylogenetic heterogeneity in flea and host faunas between realms. The clearer effect of the compositional rather than the phylogenetic component of host community dissimilarity on flea community dissimilarity suggests important roles for host switching and ecological fitting during the assembly history of flea communities.

A review of population and community dynamics and habitat selection of rodents in complex desert landscapes is presented. Population dynamics of rodents in all deserts are driven mainly by resource pulses induced by rainfall events. In a long-term perspective, this pattern is sometimes interrupted by rare extreme weather events and by habitat transformation due to wildfire or climate change. Rainfall-population density relations were found to be modified by intrinsic (population autoregulation, habitat selection) and extrinsic (interspecific competition, predation) processes, but the relative importance and geographic specificity of these processes are unclear. Density-dependent habitat selection was found in all studied desert rodent species inhabiting more than one habitat. Density-dependent habitat selection was expressed in different types of population regulation, resulting in density-dependent or density-independent habitat distribution. However, processes of density-dependent habitat selection have been studied in only one region; there are no data yet to analyze how different strategies of habitat selection vary among different desert regions. Dynamics of community composition include one widely distributed pattern, an increase in species richness with density. Another pattern, zero-sum community dynamic, was found in North American deserts. Dynamics of the niche community structure is expressed in the increase of niche overlap with density growth. In Palaearctic deserts, this increase in niche overlap was accompanied by stronger aggregation of niches in spatial guilds. The last phenomenon was not recorded in North American deserts, which reflects differences in expression of spatial guilds between Palaearctic and Nearctic rodent communities.