y. 6 73 Vol. 87, No. 35, pp. 395-404 31 December 1974 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON COMMENTS ON THE TAXONOMY OF THE WEST AFRICAN TATERILLUS (RODENTIA: CRICETIDAE) WITH THE DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES By C. Brian Robbins Division of Mammals, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. 20560 The taxonomy of West African rodents of the genus Tater-illus is confused. Allen (1939) and Ellerman (1941) listed four taxa: T. gracilis gracilis (Thomas, 1892), T. g. angelus Thomas and Hinton, 1920, T. nigeriae Thomas, 1911, and T. lacustris (Thomas and Wroughton, 1907). Rosevear (1969) recognized two species, T. gracilis and T. nigeriae, allocating T. lacustris as a subspecies of T. gracilis. Taterillus pygargus (F. Cuvier, 1838), long considered a species of Gerbillus oc-curing in Egypt and the Sudan, has been shown by Petter (1952) to be a species of Taterillus. The holotype of T. pygargus is from Senegal. This taxon was overlooked by Rosevear (1969). Even though Ellerman ( 1941 ) and Rosevear ( 1969 ) recog-nized more than one species of Taterillus, they suggested that the West African forms could be a single polymorphic species. Cytogenetic data and additional study specimens demonstrate the presence of at least four distinct species. Near topotypes of T. gracilis from Senegal have a karyotype of 2N = 36/37, FN =44 (Matthey and Jotterand, 1972; Petter et al, 1972). Chromosomal information is also known on Taterillus from Upper Volta (Matthey and Petter, 1970; Matthey and Jot-terand, 1972), Ivory Coast (Petter, pers. comm.), and Ghana (Robbins unpublished data). These specimens have a karyo-type of 2N = 36/37, FN = 42, and have been identified as 35— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 87, 1974 ( 395 )
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