Sciuridae, Fischer de Waldheim, 1817

Family: Sciuridae View in CoL

Tristram (1884) reported the Asia Minor Ground Squirrel Spermophilus xanthoprymnus as “exceedingly abundant on the sandy and stony plains of the uplands of Moab and Gilead [ Palestine]”; this species was omitted from his earlier paper ( Tristram 1866). Although Kock (1998) suggested that such evidence most probably results from confusion with a diurnal Psammomys obesus, Hoffman et al. (2005) continue to report S. xanthoprymnus as present in Syria and Jordan. This ground squirrel does not occur south of the Syrian-Turkish border (cf. Kryštufek & Vohralík 2012) and we are not aware of any observations within Syria. The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Harvard University holds a voucher labelled Citellus mugosaricus (= Spermophilus pygmaeus ) ( VertNet 2023). Species identity is certainly erroneous since S. pygmaeus is native to steppes to the north of the line Caucasus—Caspian Sea—Aral Sea (see map in Kryštufek & Vohralík 2012).