Geomyidae Bonaparte 1845

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Geomyidae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 859-870 : 859

Geomyidae Bonaparte 1845

Geomyidae Bonaparte 1845 , Cat. Meth. Mamm. Europe: 5.

Genera: 6 genera with 40 species:

Genus Cratogeomys Merriam 1895 (8 species with 42 subspecies)

Genus Geomys Rafinesque 1817 (9 species with 32 subspecies)

Genus Orthogeomys Merriam 1895 (11 species with 37 subspecies)

Genus Pappogeomys Merriam 1895 (2 species with 8 subspecies)

Genus Thomomys Wied-Neuwied 1839 (9 species with 232 subspecies)

Genus Zygogeomys Merriam 1895 (1 species)

Discussion: Revised by Russell (1968 a), who placed all Recent genera in one of two tribes in the subfamily Geomyinae : Geomyini ( Geomys , Pappogeomys , Orthogeomys , and Zygogeomys ) and Thomomyini ( Thomomys ); he included Macrogeomys and Heterogeomys as subgenera of Orthogeomys , an action followed by more recent authors ( Hafner, 1982, 1991; Hall, 1981), and Cratogeomys as a subgenus of Pappogeomys (see also Russell, 1968 b). The latter action was accepted by Hall (1981) and Patton (1993) but not by J. K. Jones et al. (1986), Lee and Baker (1987), Davidow-Henry et al. (1989), Hollander (1990), and C. Jones et al. (1997) who considered Cratogeomys as a separate genus. Hooper (1946) synonymized Platygeomys Merriam with Cratogeomys . McKenna and Bell (1997) included heteromyids as a subfamily within Geomyidae ; these are excluded here (see comments under Family Heteromyidae ). Williams (1982 b) reviewed phallic morphology; Hafner (1982), Honeycutt and Williams (1982), and Hafner et al. (1994 b) reported on phylogenetic relationships based on biochemical characters; and Wahlert (1985) provided a classification of the superfamily Geomyoidea , including Geomyidae . Russell (1968 a) and Hall (1981) provided keys to Recent genera. Korth (1994) summarized the fossil record and provided a classification of fossil taxa. Species boundaries within all pocket gopher genera are often difficult to define because of the characteristic allopatric distributions of named taxa (see Patton, 1990) and because of the common discordances among character data sets (see Patton and Smith, 1994). As a result, the history of pocket gopher systematics has been one where early on new taxa were described as separate species followed by a period of aggregation of names as subspecies or as simple synonyms (see, for example, Anderson, 1966, for a history of the allocation of names in the genus Thomomys ). Applications of chromosomal and, more recently, molecular genetic methods have begun to reverse this historical trend, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. These methodologies, along with a shift in the species concept used by systematists to one emphasizing phyletic principles, will undoubtedly result in the elevation of several of the synonyms listed for some species below to full species status in the future. This trend is already evident, for example, in the species now recognized for Geomys relative to those listed in Patton (1993). In the accounts that follow, names listed under "synonyms" that were considered distinct species at the time of their original description are indicated by an asterisk.