Acomys cahirinus (Desmarest, 1819) . Nouv. Diet. Hist. Nat., Nouv. ed., 29:70.

TYPE LOCALITY: Egypt, Cairo .

DISTRIBUTION: W Sahara to Egypt (including Sinai), N Nigeria, N Ethiopia, N Sudan, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, S Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan.

SYNONYMS: airensis, albigena, chudeaui, dimidiatus, flavidus, helmyi, hispidus, homericus, hunteri, megalodus, megalotis, nubicus, sabryi, seurati, viator, whitei.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Acomys . Synonyms have either been treated as separate species, or as subspecies or synonyms of either A. cahirinus or A. dimidiatus (Ellerman, 1941; Harrison and Bates, 1991; Petter, 1983; Setzer, 1975). The cahirinus-dimidiatus complex needs critical systematic revision and may consist of several morphologically similar species (Corbet and Hill, 1991; Petter, 1983). Benazzou (1983), for example, recognized chudeaui as a species, and Le Berre and Le Guelte (1990) listed airensis and chudeaui as separate species. Chromosomal data reported by Tranier (1975, under A. airensis), Al-Saleh (1988), Volobouev et al. (1991, under A. dimidiatus), and Harrison and Bates (1991).