Abstract
Survey of records of the common hamster (Cricetus cricetus) collected between 1980 and 2011 from territory of the Czech Republic is given. Altogether, the hamster was recorded at 88 sites in 75 localities covering 40 fields of the KFME mapping grid.
Although recently, in some west- and central European countries the hamster became rather rare, in lowland parts of central Bohemia and south Moravia it is still common and locally abundant. It seems that Pannonian genetic lineage has been less affected by decline than the west European, German and Polish lineages.
The core area of hamster distribution in the Czech Republic coincides with the occurrence of loess sediments. Altitudes of our records varies between 150 and 530 m a. s. l., great majority of them (80.7%) lies between 160 and 300 m a. s. l.
Hamster inhabits mostly agricultural land but sometimes settles also in village gardens and it occurs even at periphery of the city of Prague where it inhabits desolated fields, garden colonies and grassy plots in housing estates. Majority of our records is based on road casualties, it suggests that a traffic causes nonnegligible portion of hamster mortality.