HOME --> CLASS MAMMALIA
--> ORDER RODENTIA
--> SUBORDER SCIUROMORPHA
--> FAMILY Sciuridae
--> SUBFAMILY Xerinae
--> TRIBE Marmotini
--> GENUS Spermophilus
--> SUBGENUS see comments
SPECIES Spermophilus (see comments) major
Author: | Pallas, 1778. | Citation: | Nova Spec. Quad. Glir. Ord.: 125. | Common Name: | Russet Ground Squirrel | Type Locality: | "Steppe near Samara," [Kuibyshev, Kuibyshevsk. Obl., Russia] (Ognev, 1963a:34). | Distribution: | Steppe between Volga and Irtysh rivers (Russia; N Kazakhstan). Formerly, steppe between Don and Volga rivers (Russia; Gromov et al., 1965:291). Reported from Xinjiang (Ma et al., 1987); but probably a misidentified brevicauda. | Status: | IUCN – Lower Risk (nt). | Comments: | Subgenus Colobotis according to Gromov et al. (1965:290), but see Hall (1981:381) who included Colobotis in subgenus Spermophilus. Occasionally hybridizes with brevicauda and fulvus (Denisov, 1963; Nikol’skii and Starikov, 1997; Ognev, 1947), and more widely with pygmaeus and suslicus (Ermakov, 1996). Corbet (1978c:84) provisionally included erythrogenys and brevicauda in this species, but Gromov et al. (1965:290) and Vorontsov and Lyapunova (1970) considered erythrogenys a distinct species, and Gromov et al. (1965:315) included brevicauda in erythrogenys; see comment under those species. S. major is geographically cohesive, and allopatrically distributed with respect to brevicauda, and allopatric (Bobrinskii et al., 1965:61) or narrowly sympatric to erythrogenys (Sludskii et al., 1969:162). In contrast, it it genetically unstable, grouping with either brevicauda or pygmaeus in sequence data (Harrison et al., 2003), probably as a result of hybridization (see specimens examined). Formerly included relictus (Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1955). |
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| Offspring: | Synonyms:
argyropuloi (Bazhanov, 1947) rufescens (Keyserling and Blasius, 1840) selevini (Argyropulo, 1941)
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