Species
Arvicanthis somalicus
Description
Arvicanthis somalicus Thomas, 1903
This is a low altitude, arid habitat species with small body size. It may occur together with larger A. mearnsi in the southern part of the Afar triangle (e.g. in Awash NP; Corbet & Yalden 1972, Demeter 1983, our data), but it is probably the only species of Arvicanthis living in the large Somali region in southeastern Ethiopia. The species was described from northern Somaliland and genetically confirmed also from northern and central Kenya (Bryja et al. 2019). It has been considered as a synonym of A. neumanni, another small-bodied species living in arid habitats of the Masai steppe in Tanzania. The two taxa, however, are genetically very distinct at both nuclear and mitochondrial markers (Bryja et al. 2019), differ significantly in the shape of the skull (Fadda & Corti 2001) and karyotype (Castiglia et al. 2006), and should be considered as two different species (see also suggestions in Musser & Carleton 2005, Monadjem et al. 2015, Denys et al. 2017a).
Taxonomy
Arvicanthis somalicus is a species. It belogs to the Muridae family.
