Golden Spiny Mouse – Acomys russatus

Acomys russatusWagner, 1840

Accepted name, Mammal Species of the World 2005

Subgenus Acomys. Qumsiyeh et al. (1986) retained lewisi as a species because fur color and bacular morphology of lewisi are distinctive compared with A. russatus (Atallah, 1967), even though the karyotype of lewisi from Jordan is indistinguishable from A. russatus. However, based on morphological evidence, lewisi was included in A. russatus by other systematists (Corbet, 1978c; Harrison and Bates, 1991; Osborn and Helmy, 1980), an allocation also supported by genetic data (Janecek et al., 1991). See Nevo (1985, 1989, and references therein) for additional chromosomal data and its significance.Among species of Acomys, A. russatus is very distinctive in its molar morphology (Denys et al., 1994) and chromosomal traits (2n = 66), an isolation bolstered by phylogenetic analysis of mtDNA cytochrome b sequences, which does not associate it closely with any other single species or any species i... [truncated]

• Wilson, D and Reeder, D. (eds.) 2005. Mammal Species of the World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. 3rd ed. -- 2142 pp. Johns Hopkins University Press.