The lesser blind mole-rat (''Spalax leucodon'') is a species of

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

in the family

Spalacidae The Spalacidae, or spalacids, are a family of rodents in the large and complex superfamily Muroidea. They are native to eastern Asia, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and southeastern Europe. It includes the blind mole-rats, bamboo rats, m ...

. It is found in

Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and share ...

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and ...

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...

, Macedonia,

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia ( Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hu ...

Montenegro ) , image_map = Europe-Montenegro.svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Podgorica , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , official_languages = ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

and

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

. Prior to 2012, it was classified in the genus '' Spalax'', but modern authors tend to separate this and some closely related mole rat species into a separate genus named ''

Nannospalax ''Nannospalax'' is a genus of rodent in the family Spalacidae, found in eastern Europe and western Asia. It is one of two genera in the blind mole-rats (subfamily Spalacinae), alongside ''Spalax''. Members of this genus are also known as small-bod ...

''. A cariological study showed that ''Nannospalax leucodon'' is a superspecies consisting of several cariologically distinct

cryptic species In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each ot ...

. According to this definition there are four separate cariological forms in the

Carpathian Basin The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large Sedimentary basin, basin situated in south-east Central Europe. The Geomorphology, geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewh ...

, one of them endangered and another one vulnerable while insufficient data are available to evaluate the conservation status of the other two forms. One study directed towards

life expectancy Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, current age, and other demographic factors like sex. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth ...

used this species by virtue of its incredible longevity performance, hypoxia and

hypercapnia Hypercapnia (from the Greek ''hyper'' = "above" or "too much" and ''kapnos'' = "smoke"), also known as hypercarbia and CO2 retention, is a condition of abnormally elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the blood. Carbon dioxide is a gaseous p ...

endurance, as well as cancer resistance. Looking at the fecal and skin samples of this ideal candidate, it was found that the

Muribaculaceae ''Muribaculaceae'', previously known as S24-7, is a family of bacteria within the order Bacteroidales. ''Muribaculaceae'' is a prevalent and abundant bacterial component of the gut microbiome of mammals. In 2016, family S24-7 was studied in-de ...

bacterial family, known to be linked with longevity, dominated fecal samples.Altuntas, E., Yildirim, B., Ozturk, G., Yildirim, S., Sibai, M., Altuntaş, E., Yıldırım, B., Öztürk, G., Yıldırım, S., & Demircan, T. (2020). Microbiome and Longevity: High Abundance of Longevity-Linked Muribaculaceae in the Gut of the Long-Living Rodent Spalax leucodon. Omics : a Journal of Integrative Biology., 24(10), 592–601. https://doi.org/10.1089/omi.2020.0116 Nannospalax leucodon.jpg Földikutya (Spalax leucodon).jpg

References

* * Musser, G. G. and M. D. Carleton. 2005. Superfamily Muroidea. pp. 894–1531 ''in'' Mammal Species of the World a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. D. E. Wilson and D. M. Reeder eds. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. * Németh A, Révay T, Hegyeli Z, Farkas J, Czabán D, Rózsás A, Csorba G 2009
Chromosomal forms and risk assessment of Nannospalax (superspecies leucodon) (Mammalia: Rodentia) in the Carpathian Basin
''Folia Zoologica,'' 58(3), 349–361. Nannospalax Mammals described in 1840 Taxa named by Alexander von Nordmann Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{muroid-stub