| Comments: | Tribe Marmotini (Moore, 1959). Nearctic forms revised by A. H. Howell (1929). Sutton (1992) provided a key to the species. Includes Eutamias (sibiricus), Tamias (striatus), and Neotamias as subgenera (Corbet, 1978c:85; Ellerman, 1940:428; Levenson et al., 1985; Nadler et al., 1977). Disagreement exists regarding the status of Eutamias and Neotamias; see White (1953), Ellis and Maxson (1979), Hall (1981:337), Patterson and Heaney (1987), and Jameson (1999). Levenson et al. (1985) found that T. (T.) striatus and T. (E.) sibiricus together formed the primitive sister group to Neotamias species. Piaggio and Spicer (2001) supported this hypothesis. Thus, a single genus, Tamias, may be employed for all chipmunks (Levenson et al., 1985), but two genera (Tamias and Neotamias) could be recognized, or all three could be recognized as genera. |
