Gerbillurus Shortridge, 1942

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 547

Gerbillurus Shortridge, 1942 . Ann. S. Afr. Mus., 36:27 -1.

TYPE SPECIES: Gerbillus vallinus Thomas, 1918 .

SYNONYMS: Paratatera, Progerbillurus .

COMMENTS: Concordance of morphological, allozymic, and chromosomal data supports the monophyly of Gerbillurus and indicates its close relationship to the robusta group of Taterillus ( Qumsiyeh et al., 1987, and references therein). Pavlinov (1987) and Pavlinov et al. (1990), however, considered Gerbillurus to be a sister-species of Desmodillus and to form the monophyletic tribe Gerbillurini. Comparisons in thermal parameters, macro-and micro-environments, and interspecific aggression among four sympatric species of Gerbillurus were documented by Downs and Perrin (1989, 1990) and Dempster and Perrin (1990) in context of adaptive significance and phylogenetic relationships. Standard karyotypic data reported by Schütter et al. (1984), and an hypothesis of phylogenetic relationships among the four species, derived from chromosomal data was advanced by Qumsiyeh et al. (1991).