Mitochondrial Evidence of Refugial Distribution of the Pygmy Field Mouse Sylvaemus uralensis Pall. (Rodentia, Muridae) in the Northwestern Caucasus

Variation of the 838-bp fragment of the mitochondrial cytb gene was analyzed in Sylvaemus uralensis from the northern macroslope of the Western Caucasus. On the basis of two fixed nonsynonymous substitutions, cytb sequences of the population sample studied can be considered as a distinct Lago-Naki haplogroup, which is clustered in the European cytb lineage. As estimated on the basis of the known rate of substitutions per third codon position in S. sylvaticus, the population must have been isolated for all or a part of the last glaciation period (10000 to 100000 years ago). The observed differentiation of cytb haplotypes is indicative of the refugial distribution of S. uralensis in the northern macroslope of the Western Caucasus, as well as of a secondary contact between the Caucasian and the Russian Plain populations during the Holocene.