Taterillus Thomas, 1910

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 562

Taterillus Thomas, 1910 . Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 8, 6:222.

TYPE SPECIES: Gerbillus emini Thomas, 1892 .

SYNONYMS: Taterina .

COMMENTS: A member of the tribe Taterillini in the arrangement of Pavlinov et al. (1990). Robbins (1971) proposed a new dental terminology for the genus based on a large sample of T. gracilis , analysed (1973) nongeographic variation drawn from the same sample, and summarized (1977) morphometric and chomosomal differentiation among the seven species that he considered valid (only T. petteri has been added). Chromosomal data were reported for some species by Matthey and Petter (1970). Like many genera of African muroid rodents, Taterillus requires critical systematic revision to determine species definitions and their distributional limits. The species now recognized are morphologically similar to one another, prompting many workers to consider them "sibling" or cryptic species ( Sicard et al., 1988). Whether or not such described entities represent species or allopatric segments of a larger interbreeding unit is impossible to assess without further refinement of our present taxonomic understanding of the genus.