First record of Zarudny’s Jird, Meriones zarudnyi Heptner, 1937 (Rodentia: Muridae) in Shirvan, Northeast Iran

Among the rodent specimens deposited in the collections of Rodentology Research Department at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, one specimen of Zarudny’s Jird was found which has been collected from Shirvan, in Northern Khorasan Province, Iran. This species is a new record for the fauna of Iran. The species Meriones zarudnyi Heptner, 1937 was recorded for the first time from Kushka in Turkmenistan (Fig.1A) and is distributed in the arid steppes of northern Afghanistan and southern Turkmenistan (Musser & Carleton, 2005). Meriones zarudnyi is endemic in the Badkhiz region of southern Turkmenistan (semi-arid highland habitats), but has not beenreported in the Iranian Plateau. Meriones zarudnyi was considered a race of M. crassus by Ellerman & Morrison-Scotte (1966). Kuznetsov (1965) tentatively treated it as a distinct species, while Lay (1972), based on additional evidence from Afghanistan, emphasized that it was distinct from both M. crassus and M. tristrami. The presence of this species in Afghanistan was confirmed by Hassinger (1973) who stated that M. zarudnyi is restricted to Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. The studied specimen collected from the Shirvan confirmed that this species is widely distributed towards W of Turkmenistan and NE of Iran.