DJUNGARIAN HAMSTER AND/OR SIBERIAN HAMSTER: WHO IS WHO?

Colleagues keep asking me about the correct common name of Phodopus sungorus. Is it the Djungarian hamster or the Siberian hamster or the Striped hairy-footed hamster? And what about Phodopus campbelli, is it the Djungarian hamster or Campbell's hamster, or what? In fact, there is considerable confusion also in the literature concerning the common names for two of the now recognized three main species of the genus Phodopus, namely Phodopus sungorus (Pallas, 1773) and Phodopus campbelli (Thomas, 1905). The third species, Phodopus roborovski (Satunin, 1903), the ”Desert hamster”, is rarely used as a laboratory animal and is so different in its habitus from the two other Phodopus species that it cannot be mistaken (Ross 1994). In contrast, P. sungorus and P. campbelli are looking very similar to the unexperienced eye and I have visited several labs where colleagues claimed to have a colony of P. sungorus but instead it turned out to be P. campbelli. And in publications- even from the same laboratory- one can find both common names ”Djungarian hamster ” and ”Siberian hamster ” for P. sungorus as well as for P. campbelli.