The Lake Baikal mountain vole or Olkhon mountain vole (''Alticola olchonensis'') is a species of

rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the Order (biology), order Rodentia ( ), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and Mandible, lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal specie ...

in the family

Cricetidae The Cricetidae are a family of rodents in the large and complex superfamily Muroidea. It includes true hamsters, voles, lemmings, muskrats, and New World rats and mice. At over 870 species, it is either the largest or second-largest family ...

. It is found principally on the Olkhon and Ogoi islands on

Lake Baikal Lake Baikal is a rift lake and the deepest lake in the world. It is situated in southern Siberia, Russia between the Federal subjects of Russia, federal subjects of Irkutsk Oblast, Irkutsk Oblasts of Russia, Oblast to the northwest and the Repu ...

, in southern

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. It is also found in a small part of the bordering mainland

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, on the Baikal coast of the

Irkutsk Oblast Irkutsk Oblast (; ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in southeastern Siberia in the basins of the Angara River, Angara, Lena River, Lena, and Nizhnyaya Tunguska Rivers. The administrative center is ...

. It was originally described as a subspecies of the

silver mountain vole The silver mountain vole (''Alticola argentatus'') is a species of rodent in the family Cricetidae. They are distinguished by their silver-grey pelage, long vibrissae, rootless hypsodont molars and angular skull shape. Like many mammals of the E ...

. Since then, it has been synonymized with '' A. roylei'' in 1978, '' A. tuvinicus'', and '' A. macrotis'' before being reinstated as a species. It is likely a

sister species In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

to ''A. tuvinicus''.

References

Further reading