Gerbilliscus (Taterona) brantsii
Authors/Creators
Description
Gerbilliscus (Taterona) brantsii (Smith 1836)
[Gerbilliscus (Taterona)] brantsii (Smith 1836), Rept. Exped. Exploring Central Africa: 43.
Type Locality: South Africa, Ladybrand, E Free State Province, near Lesotho border (see Meester et al., 1986, for details).
Vernacular Names: Highveld Gerbil.
Synonyms: Gerbilliscus (Taterona) breyeri (Roberts 1926); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) draco (Wroughton 1906); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) griquae (Wroughton 1906); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) humpatensis (Hill and Carter 1937); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) joanae (Thomas 1926); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) maccalinus (Sundevall 1847); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) maputa (Roberts 1936); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) miliaria (Wroughton 1906); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) montanus (A. Smith 1842); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) namaquensis (Shortridge and Carter 1938); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) natalensis (Roberts 1929); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) perpallida (Dollman 1910); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) ruddi (Wroughton 1906); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) tongensis (Roberts 1931).
Distribution: Subtropical and wooded grasslands of South Africa (most of country except southern region; see Perrin, 1997 h; Skinner and Smithers, 1990; and Taylor, 1998), W Zimbabwe (Smithers and Wilson, 1979), Botswana (Smithers, 1971), C and E Namibia (Skinner and Smithers, 1990), S Angola (Crawford-Cabral, 1998), and SW Zambia (Ansell, 1978).
Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc) as Tatera brantsii.
Discussion: Subgenus Taterona. Taxonomy and distribution summarized by Meester et al. (1986), who assigned the species to the G. afra group. Geographic variation in protein and enzyme markers among samples from Lesotho was reported by Maurer et al. (1976). Pre- and postmating isolation in karyotypically identical G. afra and G. brantsii documented by Dempster (1996; see account of G. afra). The Angolan humpatensis was described as a species (Hill and Carter, 1937) but subsequently listed as a subspecies of G. brantsii (F. Petter, 1975 b) or a possible subspecies of G. leucogaster (Crawford-Cabral, 1986), or simply included in G. brantsii (Pavlinov et al., 1990). Crawford-Cabral (1988, 1998) and Crawford-Cabral and Pacheco (1991) treated humpatensis as a relict species surviving only in the Humpata highlands, a view requiring better documentation. There is significant geographic variation in chromatic and morphological traits within what is now called G. brantsii and some populations are isolated (F. Petter, 1975 b); perhaps humpatensis refers to one of those isolated fragments but its status can only be documented by a careful revisionary study incorporating samples of G. brantsii from throughout its geographic range. Southern African population reviewed by Perrin (1997 h) and Skinner and Smithers (1990).
Notes
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Linked records
Additional details
Identifiers
Related works
- Is part of
- Book chapter: 10.5281/zenodo.7316535 (DOI)
- Book chapter: http://publication.plazi.org/id/A2267A57FF8A65DA07E1D2E970F9422A (URL)
- Is source of
- https://biodiversitypmc.sibils.org/collections/plazi/BBB9BB595C30E307971387F3FA572324 (URL)
- https://www.gbif.org/species/231540254 (URL)
Biodiversity
- Scientific name authorship
- Smith
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Order
- Rodentia
- Family
- Muridae
- Genus
- Gerbilliscus
- Species
- brantsii
- Taxon rank
- species
- Taxonomic concept label
- Gerbilliscus (Taterona) brantsii (Smith, 1836) sec. Wilson & Reeder, 2005
References
- Meester, J. A. J., I. L. Rautenbach, N. J. Dippenaar, and C. M. Baker. 1986. Classification of southern African mammals. Transvaal Museum Monograph, 5: 1 - 359.
- Wroughton, R. C. 1906. Notes on the genus Otomys. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, ser. 7, 18: 264 - 278.
- Hill, J. E., and T. D. Carter. 1937. Ten new rodents from Angola, Africa. American Museum Novitates, 913: 9 pp.
- Shortridge, G. C., and T. D. Carter. 1938. A new genus and new species and subspecies of mammals from Little Namaqualand and the north-west Cape Province; and a new subspecies of Gerbillus paeba from the eastern Cape Province. Annals of the South African Museum, 3 (2): 281 - 291.
- Roberts, A. 1929. New forms of African mammals. Annals of the Transvaal Museum, 13: 82 - 121.
- Dollman, G. 1910. Two new African mammals. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, ser. 8, 6: 226 - 230.
- Roberts, A. 1931. New forms of South African mammals. Annals of the Transvaal Museum, 14: 221 - 236.
- Perrin, M. 1997 h. Highveld gerbil, Tatera brantsii. P. 155, in The complete book of southern African mammals (G. Mills and L. Hes, eds.). Struik Winchester, Capetown, 356 pp.
- Skinner, J. D., and R. H. N. Smithers. 1990. The mammals of the southern African subregion. Second ed. University of Pretoria, Republic of South Africa, 771 pp.
- Smithers, R. H. N., and V. J. Wilson. 1979. Checklist and atlas of the mammals of Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Museum Memoir, National Museums and Monuments of Rhodesia, Salisbury, 9: 1 - 193.
- Smithers, R. H. N. 1971. The mammals of Botswana. Museum Memoir, National Museums of Rhodesia, Salisbury, 4: 1 - 340.
- Crawford-Cabral, J. 1998. The Angolan rodents of the superfamily Muroidea: An account of their distribution. Instituto de Investigacao Cientifica Tropical, Estudos, Ensaios e Documentos, 161: 223 pp.
- Ansell, W. F. H. 1978. The mammals of Zambia. National Parks and Wildlife Service, Chilanga, 126 pp.
- Maurer, F. W., J. Op't Hof, and D. R. Osterhoff. 1976. Biochemical gene markers in the gerbil Tatera brantsii from Lesotho. Animal Blood Groups and Biochemical Genetics, 7: 231 - 239.
- Dempster, E. R. 1996. Pre- and postmating isolation in two allopatric gerbil species, Tatera afra and T. brantsii. Mammalia, 60 (4): 557 - 566.
- Petter, F. 1975 b. Subfamily Gerbillinae. Part 6.3. Pp. 7 - 12, in The mammals of Africa: An identification manual (J. Meester and H. W. Setzer, eds.) [issued 10 Dec 1975]. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., not continuously paginated.
- Pavlinov, I. Ya., Yu. A. Dubrovsky, O. L. Rossolimo, and E. G. Potapova. 1990. [Gerbils of the world.] Nauka, Moscow, 368 pp. (in Russian).
- Crawford-Cabral, J. 1988. A craniometric study on Angolan gerbils of the subgenus Tatera (Mammalia, Rodentia, Gerbillidae). Part I: Results from a principal components analysis. Zoologische Abhandlungen Staatliches Museum fur Tierkunde in Dresden, 43: 169 - 192.
- Crawford-Cabral, J., and A. P. Pacheco. 1991. A craniometric study on Angolan gerbils of subgenus Tatera (Mammalia, Rodentia, Gerbillidae). Part II: Results from discriminant and cluster analysis. Zoologische Abhandlungen Staatliches Museum fur Tierkunde in Dresden, 46: 215 - 224.