The lesser blind mole-rat (''Spalax leucodon'') is a species of
rodent in the family
Spalacidae. It is found in
Albania,
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Bulgaria,
Greece,
Hungary,
Macedonia
Macedonia most commonly refers to:
* North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia
* Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity
* Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic reg ...
,
Romania,
Serbia,
Montenegro,
Turkey and
Ukraine.
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 oth ...
. According to this definition there are four separate cariological forms in the
Carpathian Basin, 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 used this species by virtue of its incredible longevity performance,
hypoxia
Hypoxia means a lower than normal level of oxygen, and may refer to:
Reduced or insufficient oxygen
* Hypoxia (environmental), abnormally low oxygen content of the specific environment
* Hypoxia (medical), abnormally low level of oxygen in the tis ...
and
hypercapnia 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-dep ...
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
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