Distribution and survival of the social vole in a clayey semidesert of the Trans-Volga region

The social vole (Microtus socialis Pall.) is a landscape species of the Trans-Volga clayey semidesert, which disappeared from the zonal plain in the 1970s but survived in various habitats of lake depressions. In 2009, it settled over the blind plain again. The reasons for the departure and then return of the vole are not known. This phenomenon might be one of the cyclic changes in the specific composition and abundance, which are characteristic of many animals of this region.