Graphiurus (Claviglis) crassicaudatus Jentink 1888

Graphiurus (Claviglis) crassicaudatus Jentink 1888, Notes Leyden Mus., 10: 41.

Type Locality: Liberia, Du (Du Queah) River, Hill Town .

Vernacular Names: Thick-tailed African Dormouse.

Synonyms: Graphiurus (Claviglis) dorotheae Dollman 1912 .

Distribution: West Africa: Liberia (Kuhn, 1965), Côte d’Ivoire (in Mt Nimba reserve; see Heim de Balsac and Lamotte, 1958), Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon (Robbins and Schlitter, 1981; Schlitter et al., 1985), Gabon, and perhaps Bioko (Eisentraut, 1973). See Rosevear (1969) and Grubb et al. (1998).

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: Subgenus Claviglis . Some researchers hypothesized that the morphological similarity between G. crassicaudatus and G. nagtglasii indicates a close phylogenetic relationship between the two species (Holden, 1996 b; Rosevear, 1969). Results of Pavlinov and E. G. Potapova’s (2003) cladistic analysis of African dormice based on cranial and middle ear characters does not support this conclusion; they showed that characters shared by G. crassicaudatus and G. nagtglasii may be primitive for the genus, and that G. crassicaudatus shares several derived characters with other species of Graphiurus . Additionally, G. nagtglasii and G. crassicaudatus each exhibit a suite of autapomorphies. Reviewed by Rossolimo et al. (2001) and Holden (In Press).