Spermophilus major (Pallas 1778)

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Sciuridae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 754-818 : 808

Spermophilus major (Pallas 1778)

[Mus] major Pallas 1778 , Nova Spec. Quad. Glir. Ord.: 125.

Type Locality: "Steppe near Samara," [Kuibyshev, Kuibyshevsk. Obl., Russia] ( Ognev, 1963 a:34) .

Vernacular Names: Russet Ground Squirrel.

Synonyms: Spermophilus argyropuloi (Bazhanov 1947) ; Spermophilus rufescens ( Keyserling and Blasius 1840) ; Spermophilus selevini (Argyropulo 1941) .

Distribution: Steppe between Volga and Irtysh rivers ( Russia; N Kazakhstan). Formerly, steppe between Don and Volga rivers ( Russia; Gromov et al., 1965:291). Reported from Xinjiang ( Ma et al., 1987); but probably a misidentified brevicauda .

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (nt).

Discussion: Subgenus Colobotis according to Gromov et al. (1965:290), but see Hall (1981:381) who included Colobotis in subgenus Spermophilus . Occasionally hybridizes with brevicauda and fulvus ( Denisov, 1963; Nikol’skii and Starikov, 1997; Ognev, 1947), and more widely with pygmaeus and suslicus ( Ermakov, 1996) . Corbet (1978 c:84) provisionally included erythrogenys and brevicauda in this species, but Gromov et al. (1965:290) and Vorontsov and Lyapunova (1970) considered erythrogenys a distinct species, and Gromov et al. (1965:315) included brevicauda in erythrogenys ; see comment under those species. S. major is geographically cohesive, and allopatrically distributed with respect to brevicauda , and allopatric ( Bobrinskii et al., 1965:61) or narrowly sympatric to erythrogenys ( Sludskii et al., 1969:162) . In contrast, it it genetically unstable, grouping with either brevicauda or pygmaeus in sequence data ( Harrison et al., 2003), probably as a result of hybridization (see specimens examined). Formerly included relictus ( Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1955) .