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Nectogalini shrews in Central Europe: fossil record, taxonomy, range dynamics.
Pažitková, Barbora ; Horáček, Ivan (advisor) ; Farková, Lucie (referee)
History of shrew clades composing the tribe Nectogalini (including the European genus Neomys) is only poorly comprehended, both due to fragmentarity of their fossil record and incompatibility of the discrimination criteria applied in extant taxa with actual character availability in fossil material. Thus, the presented study started with a thorough biometric reexamination of extant taxa (144 ind. of N. fodiens and N. milleri, 45 ind. ofAsiatic forms) with aid of 217 metric variables and establishing a series of discrimination criteria applicable to fragmentary fossil record. Using it, I analyzed 112 fossil items available from MN15 to Q4 sites of Czech Republic and Slovakia. A rich sample from the present glacial cycle (MIS 5b to Recent) demonstrated that both N. fodiens and N. milleri colonized the region of Central Europe either in earlier stages of Vistulian glacial, in early post-LGM glacial and throughout whole Holocene (though their distribution patterns were perhaps mostly mosaic in both species). The items from the late Biharian (Q2) and the earliest Middle Pleistocene (Q3) were found to represent a single clade characterized by relatively broad phenotype variation. This form, belonging clearly to the genus Neomys, was coidentified with Neomys newtoni Hinton, 1911. The pattern of its...
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