Spermophilus (Spermophilus) xanthoprymnus Bennett 1835

Spermophilus (Spermophilus) xanthoprymnus Bennett 1835, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1835: 90.

Type Locality: " Erzurum " [Turkey].

Vernacular Names: Asia Minor Ground Squirrel.

Synonyms: Spermophilus (Spermophilus) schmidti (Satunin 1908) .

Distribution: Transcaucasia (Armenia, possibly Azerbaijan), Turkey, Syria, and Israel.

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: Subgenus Spermophilus (Gromov et al. 1965:237) . Regarded by Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951:506) and Corbet (1978 c:83) as a synonym of citellus; but see Vasil'eva (1961), Gromov et al. (1965:237), and Vorontsov and Lyapunova (1970), who provided evidence of specific distinctness. Molecular sequence data suggest that this species may form a clade together with dauricus and suslicus (Harrison et al., 2003) . Karyotypes analyzed by Doğramaci et al. (1994 a).