Lemniscomys bellieri Van der Straeten 1975

Lemniscomys bellieri Van der Straeten 1975, Rev. Zool. Afr., 89: 906.

Type Locality: Côte d’Ivoire, Ayeremou (= Lamto).

Vernacular Names: Bellier's Lemniscomys.

Distribution: Guinea and Doka woodland of C Guinea (Ziegler et al., 2002), Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana (Van der Straeten, 1975); possibly occurs in Sierra Leone (Grubb et al., 1998).

Conservation: IUCN – Data Deficient.

Discussion: Part of the murine fauna endemic to West Africa (see account of Grammomys buntingi). Karyological and morphometric comparisons between L. bellieri and L. striatus reported by Van der Straeten and Verheyen (1978 a). A relative of L. macculus, according to Van der Straeten (1975), who also recorded chromosomal information (Van der Straeten, 1977 b); Matthey (1954) and Tranier and Gautun (1979) provided additional chromosomal data. This close morphological alliance between L. bellieri and L. macculus is supported by analyses of mitochondrial gene sequences (cytochrome b, 12S and 16S rRNA gene fragments) by Ducroz et al. (2001), who also noted the weak molecular differentiation between them to be less than between their geographic samples of L. striatus, suggesting bellieri and macculus to represent a single species.