Funisciurus pyrrhopus (F. Cuvier, 1833)

Denys, Christiane, Missoup, Alain Didier, Nicolas, Violaine, Sylla, Morlaye, Douno, Mory, Kadjo, Blaise, Lalis, Aude & Monadjem, Ara, 2025, Annotated checklist of rodents from a biodiversity hotspot, Mount Nimba (West Africa), Zoosystema 47 (27), pp. 617-689 : 653

Funisciurus pyrrhopus (F. Cuvier, 1833)

Sciurus pyrrhopus Cuvier, 1833 : figure; 1842: 240.

REMARKS

This species is characterized by the presence of a white stripe on its flanks. Coe (1975) found two specimens of F. pyrrhopus that he observed commonly on the Guinean side of the mountain. Misonne & Verschuren (1976) did not report the species.Two subspecies were described from that region: F. pyrrhopus leucostigma Temminck, 1853 from Ghana and F. pyrrhopus leonis Thomas, 1905 from Sierra Leone. In a revison of Funisciurus, Rosevear (1964) mentioned that F. pyrrhopus is the largest representative of the genus but he could not find skull diagnostic characters, only pelage patterns. Later, Rosevear (1969) provided some skull characters but synonymized all known subspecies. According to Monadjem et al. (2015), F. anerythrus and F. pyrrhopus can be distinguished by the coloration of the face and limbs.

A skin from Nimba (MNHN-ZM-MO-1986-90) displays a black dorsal pelage framed by two white-yellow unbroken stripes, while the limbs are reddish-brown like in other F. pyrrhopus specimens. Similarly six specimens from NMK (9, 33, 222, 253, 257, 339) display this characteristic pattern. The belly is yellow-white and the tail black and long with few white tips above, medially rufous below. The species is quite rare in collections. No skull from Mount Nimba could be examined; only a skin without measurements. We recovered one individual with camera traps ( Appendix 7C). Five specimens were captured by hunters in Gbakoré and Seringbara in 2004- 2005 ( Dufour 2006).