The diversity of chromosome races in Sorex araneus from European Russia

Over recent years there has been a particular effort to identify the main c hromosome races of the common shrew Sorer araneus Linnaeus, 1758 in the Eur opean part of Russia. We report here on the karyotypes of 40 shrews from 18 widely distributed sites in European Russia. Three new chromosome races we re 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 additi on, 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 a l. (2000). Considering European Russia alone, there are now described eleve n 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 affi nity with the West European Karyotypic Group: European Russia appears to be a particularly interesting area, from the viewpoint of the colonization hi story of the common shrew. In terms of chromosome mutations, it appears tha t whole-arm reciprocal translocations have had an important role in the chr omosome evolution of European Russian shrews.