Located at the crossroad of the Palearctic, Saharo-Arabian, and Oriental zoogeographic
realms, and with its great environmental diversity, Iran harbors a high complexity and …

Identifying historical drivers of biodiversity distribution patterns is a central issue in ecology
and biogeography. Iran is a biodiversity-rich country in southwestern Asia. It is known that …

Background Taxonomy offers precise species identification and delimitation and thus
provides basic information for biological research, eg through assessment of species …

Checklists represent a basic tool for conservation and management of regional faunas.
However, our knowledge on species composition in a territory changes over time due to …

The mammalian family Talpidae (moles, shrew moles, desmans) is characterized by diverse
ecomorphologies associated with terrestrial, semi-aquatic, semi-fossorial, fossorial, and …

Recent water voles (genus Arvicola) display a prominent morphological diversity with a
strong ecotypical background but with unclear taxonomic associations. We provide a novel …

Background We review genealogical relationships, biogeographic patterns and broad
historical drivers of speciation within the Bathyergidae, a group of endemic African rodents …

Although there are various checklists of Italian mammals, there is not yet a synthesis of those
mammals that are endemic to Italy. Therefore, we provide for the first time a detailed review …

Seasonal changes in the environment can lead to astonishing adaptations. A few small
mammals with exceptionally high metabolisms have evolved a particularly extreme strategy …

The genus Sorex is one of the most diverse and ecologically successful lineages of the
family Soricidae. We present the first multilocus nuclear phylogeny focusing on the nominal …