Abstract
The striped ground squirrel has a wide distribution in the Ethiopian region but is restricted to a small isolated area in Palaearctic Africa. This fragment was first recorded in the late 1940s in the Souss Valley (Morocco), however, not a single new observation has been published in the following decades. In September 2016 we surveyed the Souss Valley and found squirrels at 43 sites within the triangle between Agadir–Taroudant–Tiznit. Occupied sites were not distributed at random but occurred between an altitude of 45–254 m and on a substrate with coarse texture containing >65% sand. The vast majority of the sites with squirrels (69%) were classified as suburban, cultivated or both. Habitat suitability was estimated by applying geographically weighted logistic regression analysis. The influence of local predictor variables varied across the study area indicating the heterogeneous effects on the determination of the occurrence of the species. The modelled highly suitable habitat area for the striped ground squirrel in Morocco covers almost 690 km2 and only marginally overlaps the range for the species reported in the literature.
Acknowledgements
Travels to Morocco which set the frame for present study were organised by the Oceanographic Research and Marine Environment Protection Society “Oceanic-Club” (Constanţa, Romania) and the “Grigore Antipa” National Museum of Natural History (Bucharest). We are particularly grateful to Dumitru Murariu, Răzvan-Valentin Popescu-Mirceni, Gabriel Chişamera, Costică Adam and Zaharia Răzvan. Cécile Callou (Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris) provided information on vouchers held in Paris. Access to collections was granted by Irina Ruf and Katrin Krohmann (Senckenberg Museum Frankfurt) and Rainer Hutterer (Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, Bonn). Karolyn Close edited for grammar and style. B.K. acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding no. P1-0255).
References
Aulagnier, S. 2013. Atlantoxerus getulus Barbary ground squirrel. In: (D.C.D. Happold, ed.) Mammals of Africa. Vol. III: Rodents, hares and rabbits. Bloomsbury, London. pp. 42–44.Search in Google Scholar
Aulagnier, S. and M. Thevenot. 1986. Catalogue des mammiferes sauvages du Maroc. Travaux de l’Institut Scientifique, Sér. Zool. 41: 1–164.Search in Google Scholar
Bai, S.-B., J. Wang, G.-N. Lu, P.-G. Zhou, S.-S. Hou and S.-N. Xu. 2010. GIS-based logistic regression for landslide susceptibility mapping of the Zhongxian segment in the three Gorges area China. Geomorphology 115: 23–31.10.1016/j.geomorph.2009.09.025Search in Google Scholar
Blanc, G. and F. Petter. 1959. Presence au Maroc de l’Ecureuil terrestre du Senegal Xerus erythropus. Mammalia 23: 239–241.Search in Google Scholar
Brunsdon, C., A.S. Fotheringham and M.E. Charlton. 1996. Geographically weighted regression: a method for exploring spatial nonstationarity. Geogr. Anal. 28: 281–298.10.1111/j.1538-4632.1996.tb00936.xSearch in Google Scholar
Cabrera, A. 1932. Los Mamíferos de Marruecos. Trabajos del Museo National de Ciencias Naturales. Ser. Zool. 57: 209–222.Search in Google Scholar
Cassola, F. 2016. Xerus erythropus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T23144A22253140. http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T23144A22253140.en. Downloaded on 22 January 2017.10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T23144A22253140.enSearch in Google Scholar
Eastman, J.R. 2015. TerrSet. Clark University, Worcester.Search in Google Scholar
ESRI. 2010. ArcGIS Desktop: Release 9.3. Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA.Search in Google Scholar
FAO/IIASA/ISRIC/ISSCAS/JRC, 2012. Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.2). FAO, Rome, Italy and IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria.Search in Google Scholar
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAO GEONETWORK. Land cover of Morocco - Globcover Regional (GeoLayer). (Latest update: 04 Jun 2015) Accessed (6 Apr 2017). URI: http://data.fao.org/ref/fad3f475-8973-463f-b56a-e6b6535c1db5.html?version=1.0.Search in Google Scholar
Fox, J. and S. Weisberg. 2011. An R companion to applied regression (2nd ed.). Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. URL: http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Books/Companion.Search in Google Scholar
Fox, J., S. Weisberg, D. Adler, D. Bates, G. Baud-Bovy, S. Ellison, Firth, D., M. Friendly, G. Gorjanc, S. Graves, R. Heiberger, R. Laboissiere, G. Monette, D. Murdoch, H. Nilsson, D. Ogle, B. Ripley, W. Venables, D. Winsemius, A. Zeileis and R-Core. 2014. Package car: companion to applied regression. Technical Report. URL: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/car/car.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
Galimberti, A., A. Sandionigia, A. Brunoa, A. Bellatib and M. Casiraghi. 2015. DNA barcoding in mammals: what’s new and where next? Hystrix It. J. Mamm. 26: 13–24.Search in Google Scholar
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, É. 1803. Catalogue des Mammifères du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle. Paris.10.5962/bhl.title.116294Search in Google Scholar
Gessner, C. 1569. Thierbuch. Wilhelm Gerlins, Franckfurt am Main, pp. 1–104.Search in Google Scholar
Herron, M.D. and J.M. Waterman. 2004. Xerus erythropus. Mamm. Species. 748: 1–4.10.1644/748Search in Google Scholar
Jarvis, A., H.I. Reuter, A. Nelson and E. Guevara. 2008. Hole-filled SRTM for the globe Version 4, available from the CGIAR-CSI SRTM 90m Database (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org).Search in Google Scholar
Jenness, J., B. Brost and P. Beier. 2013. Land Facet corridor Designer. Arizona Board of Forest Research. http://www.jennessent.com/downloads/Land_Facet_Tools.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
Jentink, F.A. 1882. A monograph of the African squirrels, with an enumeration of the specimens in the Leyden Museum. Notes Leyden Mus. 4: 1–53.Search in Google Scholar
Kowalski, K. and B. Rzebik-Kowalska. 1991. Mammals of Algeria. Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, pp. 1–370.Search in Google Scholar
Kryštufek, B., A. Mahmoudi, A.S. Tesakov, J. Matějů and R. Hutterer. 2016. A review of bristly ground squirrels Xerini and a generic revision in the African genus Xerus. Mammalia 80: 521–540.10.1515/mammalia-2015-0073Search in Google Scholar
Kuper, R. and S. Kröpelin. 2006. Climate-controlled Holocene occupation in the Sahara: motor of Africa’s evolution. Science 313: 803–807.10.1126/science.1130989Search in Google Scholar PubMed
Lataste, F. 1885. Étude de la Faune des Vertébrés de Barbarie (Algérie, Tunisie et Maroc). Catalogue provisoire des Mammifères apélaqiues sauvages. Actes Soc. Linn. Bordeaux 39: 129–289.Search in Google Scholar
Liu, Z., Y. Wang, R. Gallimore, M. Notaro and I.C. Prentice. 2006. On the cause of abrupt vegetation collapse in North Africa during the Holocene: climate variability vs. vegetation feedback. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33: L22709.10.1029/2006GL028062Search in Google Scholar
Lomolino, M., B. Riddle and J. Brown. 2006. Biogeography. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, pp. 1–878.Search in Google Scholar
McCune, B. and J.B. Grace. 2002. Analysis of ecological communities. MjM Software Design, Gleneden Beach, Oregon, pp. 1–304.Search in Google Scholar
Nakaya, T., M. Charlton, S. Fotheringham and C. Brunsdon. 2014. GWR4 version 4.0.80. Application for geographically weighted regression modelling. National Centre for Geocomputation, National University of Ireland Maynooth and Department of Geography, Ritsumeikan University, Japan.Search in Google Scholar
Oksanen, J., F.G. Blanchet, M. Friendly, R. Kindt, P. Legendre, D. McGlinn, P.R. Minchin, R.B. O‘Hara, G.L. Simpson, P. Solymos, M.H.M. Stevens, E. Szoecs and H. Wagner. 2017. Vegan: community ecology package. Version 2.4–2. CRAN.R-project.org/packageĽvegan. Accessed 17 January 2017.Search in Google Scholar
Osborn, D.J. and J. Osbnornova. 1998. The mammals of ancient Egypt. The natural history of Egypt 4. Aris & Phillips Ltd., Warminster, pp. 1–213.Search in Google Scholar
Phillips, S.J., M. Dudík, J. Elith, C.H. Graham, A. Lehmann, J. Leathwick and S. Ferrier. 2009. Sample selection bias and presence-only distribution models: implications for background and pseudo-absence data. Ecol. Appl. 19: 181–197.10.1890/07-2153.1Search in Google Scholar PubMed
R Development Core Team. 2008. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, http://www.Rproject.org.Search in Google Scholar
Rosevear, D.R. 1969. The rodents of West Africa. British Museum (Nat. Hist.), London, pp. 1–604.Search in Google Scholar
Saint Girons, M.-C. and F. Petter. 1965. Les rongeurs du Maroc. Trav. Inst. Sci. Cherifien, Ser. Zool. 31: 1–55.Search in Google Scholar
Schmidt, D.F., C.A. Ludwig and M.D. Carleton. 2008. The Smithsonian Institution African Mammal Project (1961–1972): an annotated gazetteer of collecting localities and summary of its taxonomic and geographic scope. Smithson Contrib. Zool. 628: 1–320.10.5479/si.00810282.628Search in Google Scholar
Stojak, J., A.D. McDevitt, J.S. Herman, B. Krystufek, J. Uhlikova, J.J. Purger, L.A. Lavrenchenko, J.B. Searle and J. Wojcik. 2016. Between the Balkans and the Baltic: phylogeography of a common vole mitochondrial DNA lineage limited to Central Europe. PLoS One 11: e0168621.10.1371/journal.pone.0168621Search in Google Scholar PubMed PubMed Central
Waterman, J.M. 2013. Xerus erythropus Striped ground squirrel (African ground squirrel, West-African ground squirrel, Geoffrey’s ground squirrel). In: (D.C.D. Happold, ed.) Mammals of Africa. Volume III: Rodents, hares and rabbits. Bloomsbury, London, pp. 94–96.Search in Google Scholar
Supplemental Material:
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2017-0060).
©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
