The diversity of chromosome races in Sorex araneus from European Russia

Over recent years there has been a particular effort to identify the main chromosome races of the common shrew Sorer araneus Linnaeus, 1758 in the European part of Russia. We report here on the karyotypes of 40 shrews from 18 widely distributed sites in European Russia. Three new chromosome races were described: the Manturovo (go, hi, jll, kq, ma, pr), the Neroosa (g/o, hi, j/l, k/r, ma, pig) and the Seliger (g, ha, ih, jl, mig, o, pr). In addition, a single individual from Belarus, was from a new race: the Lepel (g/m, hk, i/p, jl, n/q, o/r), which has been further characterised by Mishta et al. (2000). Considering European Russia alone, there are now described eleven distinct chromosome races of the common shrew. Same of these races appear to belong to a Finnish-Ural Mts-West Siberian lineage, others have an affinity with the West European Karyotypic Group: European Russia appears to be a particularly interesting area, from the viewpoint of the colonization history of the common shrew. In terms of chromosome mutations, it appears that whole-arm reciprocal translocations have had an important role in the chromosome evolution of European Russian shrews.