Meriones libycus Lichtenstein, 1823 . Verz. Doublet. Zool. Mus. Univ. Berlin, p. 5.

TYPE LOCALITY: Egypt, near Alexandria .

DISTRIBUTION: North Africa from Western Sahara (Rio de Oro) to Egypt, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and into S Turkestan to W China (Xinjiang).

SYNONYMS: afghanus, aquilo, arimalius, auratus, azizi, caucasius, caudatus, coIlium, edithae, erythrourus, evelynae, eversmanni, farsi, gaetulus, guyonii, heptneri, iranensis, marginae, mariae, maxeratis, melanurus, oxianus, renaultii, schousboeii, schwarzovi, sogdianus, syrius, turfanen.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Pallasiomys . Reviewed by Corbet (1978c). Regional studies cover populations in Algeria (Kowalski and Rzebik-Kowalska, 1991), Libya (Ranck, 1968, as caudatus), Egypt (Osborn and Helmy, 1980), Arabian Penninsula (Harrison and Bates, 1991), Iran (Lay, 1967), and Afghanistan (Hassinger, 1973). Results of comparative craniometric analyses between Moroccan samples of M. libycus and M. shawi obtained in sympatry were reported by Zaime and Pascal (1988). Morphological and karyotypic contrasts between these same two species as well as laboratory hybridization experiments, were recorded by Lay and Nadler (1969). In North Africa, M. libycus inhabits the Sahara desert, but does extend to the Mediterranean in Morocco, Algeria, and Libya where it overlaps the distribution of M. shawi, which is primarily Mediterranean littoral (Lay and Nadler, 1969; Zaime and Pascal, 1988). Citations for synonyms among Russian samples were supplied by Pavlinov and Rossolimo (1987); afghanus is proposed as a new subspecies in that checklist. The Xinjiang population was reviewed by Ma et al. (1987).

Lay and Nadler (1969) also clarified why caudatus, used by Ranck (1968) as a species name for Libyan samples, simply refers to M. libycus . Corbet (1978c:127), apparently unaware of the report by Lay and Nadler (1969), followed Ranck and listed caudatus as a species, but cautioned that caudatus may be "conspecific with M. libycus and that the Libyan forms assigned by Ranck to M. libycus should really be allocated to M. shawi ." This is correct and restates the past confusion that has "clouded the taxonomy of M. shawi and M. libycus because of uncertainty concerning the number of species in this complex and their nomenclature" (Lay and Nadler, 1969:44).