Gerbilliscus (Taterona) robustus (Cretzschmar 1826)

[Gerbilliscus (Taterona)] robustus (Cretzschmar 1826), in: Ruppell, Atlas Reise Nordl. Afr., Zool. Saugeth., Vol. 1: 75.

Type Locality: Sudan, Ambukol.

Vernacular Names: Fringe-tailed Gerbil.

Synonyms: Gerbilliscus (Taterona) bayeri (Lönnberg 1918); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) bodessae (Frick 1914); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) iconica (Dollman 1911); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) loveridgei (Hatt 1935); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) mombasae (Wroughton 1906); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) muansae (Matschi 1911); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) murinus (Sundevall 1842); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) pothae (Heller 1910); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) shoana (Wroughton 1906); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) swaythlingi (Kershaw 1921); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) taylori (Hatt 1935); Gerbilliscus (Taterona) vicinus (Peters 1878) .

Distribution: Burkina Faso, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania (see Bates, 1985, 1988).

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc) as Tatera robusta .

Discussion: Subgenus Taterona . Revised by Bates (1988), who summarized chromosomal, distributional and ecological data, and reviewed by Pavlinov et al. (1990). Pavlinov et al. (1990) allocated bayeri and bodessana to G. nigricaudus, following Davis (1975 a), but Bates (1988) assigned them to the synonymy of G. robustus . Pavlinov (1997) used discriminant analysis of cranial variables to verify the distinctness of G. robustus compared with G. guineae and G. phillipsi and showed that the holotype of bodessana clustered with G. phillipsi and those of bodessae and taylori grouped with samples of G. robustus . Bulatova et al. (2002) provided chromosomal information for Ethiopian sample.