Euxerus erythropus
Creators: name: Kryštufek, Boris
name: Mahmoudi, Ahmad
name: Tesakov, Alexey S.
name: Matějů, Jan
name: Hutterer, Rainer
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2015
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Mammalia
Rodentia
Sciuridae
Euxerus
Euxerus erythropus

description: Euxerus erythropus (É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire): Striped ground squirrel   
 Sciurus eyrthoupus (sic) É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1803, p. 178. Type locality: “Inconnue” (=unknown). A specimen from Senegal, acquired by Florent Prévost in November 1820 and deposited in Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (MNHN-ZM-MO-2000-601), was designated as neotype (Rode 1943). Type locality is therefore (“probably”) Senegal (Allen 1954). The ICZN (1971: 224) ruled erythoupus by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire to be an incorrect original spelling for erythropus, placed erythoupus on the Official Index of Rejected and Invalid Specific Names in Zoology, and validated the emendation of the specific name erythoupus to erythroupus. Wilson and Reeder (1993) regarded Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1803) (“a very rare book”; Jentink 1882) as not validly published, what was rebuffed in Corbet and Hill (1994); with reference to Hill 1980).   
Six subspecies were recognized by Amtmann (1975) and tentatively mapped in Herron and Waterman (2004).  
 Etymology. – “Eu” is Greek for “typical”+ Xerus; i.e. “a typical bristly ground squirrel”. The species name erythropus is from “eruthros” (red) and “pous” (a foot, both Greek), i.e. “a red-footed”, although “there is nothing to indicate why Geoffroy should have chosen the name... as it is [red-footed] in fact not one which has any particular application to any known form [of E. erythropus]” (Rosevear 1969: 132); note the above claim by Hollister (1919) who stated that feet and other parts of body are often stained with the soil what changes the color.   
 Diagnosis. – Euxerus erythropus is a large member of the subtribe Xerina, recognizable by a combination of flank stripe (Figure 2), narrow skull (Figure 6), and a high incidence of the 3 rd upper premolar (present in ~80% of individuals; Figure 8). The ears are moderately large, with tragus present. Metatarsal pads are absent and plantar pads are more reduced in size than in any other African species (Pocock 1922). Females have two (Figure 5) or three pairs of nipples (mean=2.71±0.469, n=14). The baculum (length= 8–9 mm) consists of a cylindrical proximal part and distal compressed blade; the dorsal crest ossifies only partly (Pocock 1923). The Y chromosome is acrocentric (biarmed in the remaining Xerini). The jugal bone is bluntly truncated against the lacrimal (i.e. without a short wedge-like extension between the lacrimal and maxillary; Figure 10).   
 Distribution. – Endemic to the Sudano-Guinean savannah (Denys 1999). E. erythropus is a habitat generalist (Rosevear 1969) occupying a wide subtropical and tropical belt between the equator and the transition of the Sahelian zone and Sahara (Granjon and Duplantier 2009, Monadjem et al. 2015). Range extends from the Atlantic coast in the west to Eritrea, western Ethiopia and north-western Kenya in the east (Figure 10). There is an isolate in the Souss region in western Morocco (Blanc and Petter 1959). Remnants of the Neolithic age from Bir Kiseiba in southern Egypt (Osborn and Osbnornová 1998) are another evidence of a wider occurrence in Palaearctic Africa during the Holocene. The 19 th century records for Egypt (Jansen 1882) and “Nubia” (Supplemental Appendix 2) however most probably refer to what is now Sudan (cf. Anderson 1902).   
 Remarks. – Euxerus erythropus is reviewed in Rosevear (1969), and (as Xerus erythropus) in Herron and Waterman (2004) and Waterman (2013b).
description: Published as part of Kryštufek, Boris, Mahmoudi, Ahmad, Tesakov, Alexey S., Matějů, Jan & Hutterer, Rainer, 2016, A review of bristly ground squirrels Xerini and a generic revision in the African genus Xerus, pp. 521-540 in Mammalia (Warsaw, Poland) (Warsaw, Poland) 80 (5) on page 533, DOI: 10.1515/mammalia-2015-0073, http://zenodo.org/record/10476681