Morphological, Karyological and Electrophoretic Studies on the Genus Arvicanthis ( Rodentia: Murinae) in Egypt

Abstract

The murine rodents fonn one of the most common subfamilies of the family

Muridae (Musser and Carleton, 1993). The subfamily Murinae comprises the Old World

mice and rats and includes 122 genera and 529 species of the whole rodent species

currently described. One of its unique features is the quasi-absence of any suprageneric arrangement, which illustrates the high phenotypic homogeneity of its components. In contrast to the related subfamily Sigmodontinae (New World mice and rats), which is subdivided into seven well-defined tribes (Reig, 1980), the only tribal units proposed for the Murinae were Conilurini, Hydromyini, and Anidomyini (Watts and Aslin, 1981: Lidicker and Brylski, 1987), all restricted to the Australian region. In particular, the

suprageneric relationships of the extensive African murine fauna, which include more ,. than 150 species arranged in approximately 30 genera, are still very poorly understood.

Arvicanthine murid rodents are one of the most common groups of murine fauna in Africa and that have ever been put forward to contribute to a better understanding of their taxonomy and phylogeny.

The first author to introduce the concept of arvicanthine rodents was Misonne

(1969) in his study of the evolutionary trends in the African and Indo-Australian Muridae. He created an Arvicanthis "Division" in which he grouped 12 genera, both African and Asian, namely Aethomys, Arvicanthis, Dasyms, Dephomys, Golunda, Hadromys, Hybomys, Lemniscomys, Mylomys, Pelomys, Rhabdomys and Stochomys, with the possible inclusion of Bandicota and Nesokia. This Arvicanthis "Division", named after its most representative genus, was defined almost solely on dental traits. In a later revision of the systematics of Hadromys, Musser (1987) concluded that only the genera Arvicanthis, Lemniscomys, Mylomys, Pelomys (including Desmomys), Rhabdomys and