Aethomys chrysophilus (de Winton, 1852)

Denys, Christiane, Lalis, Aude, Lecompte, Émilie, Cornette, Raphaël, Moulin, Sibyle, Makundi, Rhodes H., Machang, Robert S., Volobouev, Vitaly & Aniskine, Vladimir M., 2011, A faunal survey in Kingu Pira (south Tanzania), with new karyotypes of several small mammals and the description of a new Murid species (Mammalia, Rodentia), Zoosystema 33 (1), pp. 5-47 : 13

Aethomys chrysophilus (de Winton, 1852)

Mus chrysophilus de Winton, 1852: 801 .

In Kingu Pira , line D provided one large Aethomys . In Tanzania A. hindei Thomas, 1902 , A. kaiseri Noack, 1887 and A. chrysophilus de Winton, 1897 are coexisting ( Kingdon 1974). In their revision of the A. hindei complex, Denys & Tranier (1992) provided some criteria to separate between those species based on dental, skull and external morphology. The Kingu Pira specimen is attributed to A. chrysophilus due to the very long tail ( Table 4), the characteristic skull and dental morphology (cf. Denys &Tranier 1992). A CVA analysis performed upon the four external measurements including topotypes specimens of A. hindei (type locality of Machakos, Kenya) and A. chrysophilus from northern and southern Tanzania displays a good distinction between the three groups ( Fig. 4 ) with an overall rate of classification error of 13.56%. All A. hindei were 100% well classified, against 99.76% of the A. chrysophilus for which one individual was classified as A. hindei . The most confusion occurred between north and south A. chrysophilus which have some overlap on the graph. On Figure 4 , the Kingu Pira specimen is morphologically close to specimens of the Morogoro and southern Tanzanian localities attributed to A. chrysophilus . At Dakawa, the two species occur in sympatry.The chromosome formula of our Kingu Pira specimen is 2n = 50, FNa = 58, which corresponds unambiguously to the true A. chrysophilus from Zimbabwe and RSA according to Gordon & Rautenbach (1980) and to A. cf. chrysophilus of north Tanzania found by Castiglia et al. (2003) and Fadda et al. (2001) ( Table 5, Fig. 5 ). It is different from A. ineptus Thomas & Wroughton, 1908 (2n = 44, FNa = 58) from Zimbabwe and South Africa and from A. kaiseri of Zambia (2n = 50, FNa = 60), which has very large sex chromosomes and 45 acrocentric chromosomes ( Corti et al. 2005; Linzey & Chimimba 2008).

Figures

FIG. 4. — CVA performed on external measurements of Tanzanian Aethomys hindei Thomas, 1902 from Machakos (type locality) and Dakawa (Þ),A.chrysophilus de Winton,1897 from Kanyelele (north Tanzania) (¯) and A. chrysophilus from various localities further south (Á), Morogoro (Ú), Kingu Pira (D) and Dakawa (Â). The Dakawa locality has yielded both A. chrysophilus and A. hindei specimens.

FIG. 5. — Standard karyotype of KP female Aethomys chrysophilus de Winton, 1897 specimen (MNHN-CG2007-1248).