Arvicanthis niloticus
Creators: name: Musser, Guy G.
name: Carleton, Michael D.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 1993
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Mammalia
Rodentia
Muridae
Arvicanthis
Arvicanthis niloticus

description: <i>Arvicanthis niloticus</i> (Desmarest, 1822). Mammalogie <i>in</i> Encyclop. Méth., 2:281. TYPE LOCALITY: Egypt. DISTRIBUTION: Specimens we examined were from S Mauritania, Senegal, and Gambia east through Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, S Niger, S Chad, Sudan, and Egypt to the western half of Ethiopia (to and in the Rift Valley); south through NE Zaire, Uganda, S Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania west of the Rift Valley, into E Zamibia, where the population is isolated from the nearest one, which is in SW Tanzania (Ansell, 1978); there is a record from N Malawi (1 skull only, living animals never found; Ansell and Dowsett, 1988); and the species occurs in SW Arabia. SYNONYMS: <i>ansorgei, centralis, centrosus, dembeensis, discolor, jebelae, kordofanensis, luctosus,</i> <i>variegatus</i> var. <i>major</i> <i>, mearnsi,</i> <i>variegatus</i> var. <i>minor</i> <i>, mordax, muansae, naso, nubilans, occidentalis, ochropus, pelliceus, raffertyi, reichardi, rhodesiae, rossii, rubescens, rufinus, setosus, solatus, tenebrosus, testicularis, variegatus, zaphiri.</i> COMMENTS: We include <i>dembeensis,</i> which has been recognized as a distinct species occurring in Ethiopia and nearby regions (Yalden et al., 1976; Demeter, 1983). Thomas (1910b) had once associated <i>dembeensis</i> with <i>Desmomys,</i> noting that it had already been referred to Mus, <i>Arvicanthis, Golunda, Pelomys,</i> and <i>Oenomys.</i> Later, however, Thomas (1928a) referred <i>dembeensis</i> to <i>Arvicanthis,</i> a view confirmed by Osgood (1936) and reinforced by Dieterlen (1974). The name <i>lacernatus</i> was once used in place of <i>dembeensis</i> for the Ethiopian samples of <i>Arvicanthis</i> (Allen, 1939; Corbet and Yalden, 1972; Osgood, 1936) but cranium of the holotype is an example of <i>Meriones</i> (Yalden et al., 1976). <i>Arvicanthis dembeensis</i> was thought to be a separate species because Ethiopian samples were originally contrasted by Corbet and Yalden (1972, under the name <i>lacernatus)</i> with <i>abyssinicus,</i> which they treated as a subspecies of <i>A. niloticus.</i> However, <i>abyssinicus</i> is a distinctive species related to <i>A. blicki</i> and not to <i>A. niloticus.</i> We observed that the diagnostic features attributed to <i>dembeensis</i> also described samples of <i>Arvicanthis</i> from throughout Africa west and south of Ethiopia. Sympatry with other species of <i>Arvicanthis</i> has been recorded at several places in Uganda (Delany, 1975; Dollman, 1911; Hollister, 1919), but we cannot distinguish two kinds at the localities. The only verifiable sympatry is between the large-bodied <i>A. niloticus</i> and the small-bodied <i>A. somalicus</i> in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia <i>(niloticus</i> was recorded as either <i>dembeensis</i> or <i>lacernatus;</i> Corbet and Yalden, 1972; Demeter, 1983) and in the Mawele region (Mwanasomano's, 30 mi S Tabora) In C Tanzania (documented by specimens in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard). Allopatry or parapatry, however, is usual. In Ethiopia, <i>A. niloticus</i> occurs up to about 2000 ft and is replaced at higher elevations by <i>A. abyssiniens</i> and <i>A. blicki</i> (Rupp, 1980; Yalden et al., 1976); in Kenya and Tanzania, <i>A. niloticus</i> ranges west of the E Rift Valley and is allopatric with <i>A. nairobae,</i> found in and east of the Rift. Our definition of <i>A. niloticus</i> is unsatisfactory. There is appreciable intra- and interpopulational variation in body size, pelage coloration, and cytological and biochemical traits, and the significance of this variation should be assessed by a critical systematic revision; more than one species may be present in the complex, as suggested by morphometric (Rousseau, 1983), chromosomal (Viegas-Pequignot et al., 1983; Volobouev et al., 1987) and electrophoretic (Kaminski et al., 1984) analyses. Furthermore, Corbet (1984) questioned including the Arabian <i>naso</i> with <i>A. niloticus.</i> Capanna and Civitelli (1988) recorded a karyotype with 2N=44 from a sample they identified as <i>A. niloticus</i> from Somalia; this contrasts with the range of 56-62 usually reported among samples of the species.
description: Published as part of <i>Guy G. Musser &amp; Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, pp. 501-755 in Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London :Smithsonian Institution Press</i> on pages 577-578, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7353098
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