Jaculus thaleri Darvish & Hosseinie, 2005

Jaculus thaleri Darvish & Hosseinie, 2005: 23 .

COMMON NAME. — Thaler’s Jerboa.

HOLOTYPE. — ZMFUM-992.

TYPE LOCALITY. — Jafarabad, 35°00’N and 58°05’E, Kavir-e-Namak, Kashmar, Khorasan Razavi Province.

DISTRIBUTION. — Known from the type locality and Bandan in the South Khorasan Province (Darvish & Hosseinie 2005) .

HABITAT. — Poorly known. Semi-desert of the northeast of Iran (Darvish & Hosseinie 2005).

IUCN. — Not evaluated.

REFERENCE. — Darvish & Hosseinie (2005).

REMARK

This species is closely related to J. blanfordi (Murray, 1884) by skull characteristics and the very complex structure of penis. However, the white flag is absent in the tail of J. thaleri, and karyotype is different from J. blanfordi (Darvish & Hosseinie 2005) . Michaux & Shenbrot (2017) concluded that the Thaler’s Jerboa was an aberrant phenotype of J. blanfordi rather than an independent species. Hence, further sampling around the type locality (Kavir-e-Namak) and more integrated taxonomic studies are needed for precise inferences on this issue.