Phylogeography of the common hamster (Cricetus cricetus): paleoclimatic reconstructions of Late Pleistocene colonization.

Genetically verified occurrence points were taken from our data and from publications (Neumann I et al. i [51]; Banaszek I et al. i [8]; Hegyeli I et al. i [32]; Melosik I et al. i [48]; Korbut I et al. i [39]). Later, Korbut I et al. i ([39]) argued this assumption and supposed that "hamsters survived in eastern steppe refugia from which they migrated westward through northern European plains or through the southern route around the Carpathians to Central and Western Europe" (Neumann I et al. i [51]; Banaszek I et al. i [7]). Korbut I et al. i also discussed the potential contraction of the hamster distribution during both Saalian Glacial and Eemian interstadial (Korbut I et al. i [39]). The bins of the scale for MIS7-MIS6 correspond to nomenclature suggested by Railsback I et al. i ([59]), MIS5 by Shackleton I et al. i ([67]), and Otvos ([53]) and MIS4 by Scrucca I et al. i ([66]). Moreover, the common hamster started to rapidly colonize some cities in Western Europe (Schmelzer & Millesi [65]; Feoktistova I et al. i [25]; Flamand I et al. i [27]), in Eastern Europe (Canády [13]; Feoktistova I et al. i [24]; Buczek [12]), and Kazakhstan (Feoktistova I et al. i [20]). [Extracted from the article]