Intrapopulation variation in odontometric characters of the bank vole Myodes glareolus Schreber, 1780 in the Middle Urals

Abstract

535 Dental characteristics are widely used in the study of evolutionary and ecological aspects of intraspecific variation in rodents (Bol’shakov et al., 1980; Chaline et al., 1999; Borodin, 2009; Olenev, 2009; etc.). At the same time, differences in sex–age population struc ture, recorded in different seasons and phases of pop ulation cycles, may provide for morphological hetero geneity of samples in species with well manifested age variation, such as the bank vole (Myodes glareolus Schreber, 1780). Since the shape of molars in this spe cies markedly changes with age due to tooth wear (Borodin, 2009), heterogeneity of age population structure may have a significant effect on the results of intraspecific comparisons (Borodin et al., 2006), including comparisons between animals sampled from the same population in different seasons (Gue re cheau et al., 2009).