New data on the taxonomy and distribution of Rodentia (Mammalia) from the western and coastal regions of Guinea West Africa

Abstract

We compiled the first taxonomic inventory of rodents inhabiting the region from northwestern Guinea to coastal Guinea and this enabled an improved understanding of the rodent fauna of this unexplored region at the western margin of the guineo-congolese forest block. Through standard cytogenetic and morphological analyses we described the presence of two sibling species of the genus Mastomys in West Africa. We report here the first records for Guinea of Arvicanthis ansorgei and M. mattheyi. Our data indicated an extension of the known distribution of Lemniscomys striatus to include the western region of the range of Lophuromys cf. sikapusi. A comparison between southern Senegal, southern Mali, Ivory Coast and eastern Guinea assemblages shows some differences in the rodents between eastern and western Guinea as well as with the surrounding countries. It appears that coastal Guinea could correspond to a transition zone between forest and savanna but this region appears to be ecologically highly degraded in terms of its small mammal communities. Rattus rattus is found in all sampled localities but Mus musculus is restricted to one locality where it was the dominant species of the assemblage. Our study highlights the importance of surveys of rodent biodiversity in unexplored zones.

Range expansion of the invasive house mouseMus musculus domesticusinSenegal,WestAfrica: a synthesis of trapping data over three decades, 1983–2014

“…() and Denys et al. () showed it to be present in villages of the prefecture of Kindia (west of Guinea). Recent city surveys in northern Nigeria (Kano, M. Garba, unpublished data) and eastern Gabon (Franceville, J. Mangombi, unpublished data) have also yielded house mouse specimens in areas where the species was not mentioned by Happold ().…”

Guinean biodiversity at the edge: Rodents in forest patches of southern Mali

“…nor any site in southern Mali contained a suite of species typical of the humid forests and associated savannas of the true Guinean zone, as that found in the countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea, from Guinea to Nigeria. These include Dendromus melanotis, Dephomys defua, Grammomys buntingi and G. macmillani, Hylomyscus alleni, H. baeri and H. stella, Hybomys trivirgatus, Lophuromys sikapusi, Malacomys edwardsi and M. cansdalei, Mylomys dybowskii, Oenomys ornatus, Praomys tullbergi, and Stochomys longicaudatus (Happold 1977;Gautun et al 1986;Decher 1997;Decher and Bahian 1999;Denys et al 2009). Most of them belong to a group of "West African endemics" (Musser and Carleton 2005), only a few of which (especially G. buntingi and L. sikapusi) reach the latitudes of our study sites, but mainly in coastal and northern Guinea up to southwestern Senegal (Casamance; Denys et al 2009;Granjon and Duplantier 2009).…”

“…These include Dendromus melanotis, Dephomys defua, Grammomys buntingi and G. macmillani, Hylomyscus alleni, H. baeri and H. stella, Hybomys trivirgatus, Lophuromys sikapusi, Malacomys edwardsi and M. cansdalei, Mylomys dybowskii, Oenomys ornatus, Praomys tullbergi, and Stochomys longicaudatus (Happold 1977;Gautun et al 1986;Decher 1997;Decher and Bahian 1999;Denys et al 2009). Most of them belong to a group of "West African endemics" (Musser and Carleton 2005), only a few of which (especially G. buntingi and L. sikapusi) reach the latitudes of our study sites, but mainly in coastal and northern Guinea up to southwestern Senegal (Casamance; Denys et al 2009;Granjon and Duplantier 2009). Their absence in our samples confirms White (1983) and Dowsett-Lemaire and Dowsett (2005) who suggested that lowland forests in southern Mali should not be considered as typical GuineoCongolian rainforest based on the species composition of plants and birds.…”

“…Happold (1987) provided information on rodents from this biogeographic zone in Nigeria, Mess and Krell (1999) from Comoé National Park in northeastern Ivory Coast, Bâ (2002) from the Kedougou area in southeastern Senegal, Ziegler et al (2002) from Haut Niger National Park in central Guinea, and Granjon et al (2004) from Zakouma National Park in Chad. Farther south, information on rodents from the Guinean vegetation zone comes from Happold (1977), Gautun et al (1986), Decher (1997, Decher and Bahian (1999), and Denys et al (2009), among others.…”

2010: The year of biodiversity

“…Biodiversity has been our topic since the very beginning of our history (by the way, besides the last five years, the back issues of the Journal are freely available on our web page, http:// www.informaworld.com/ijz, starting from 1930: check them over), when the word had not yet been coined. The recent contributions of the Italian Journal of Zoology to the basic study of biodiversity reside in taxonomic revisions, descriptions of new species and higher taxa, phylogenetic analyses (see for instance the recent papers by Andreone et al 2009;Dell'Angelo et al 2009;Denys et al 2009;Stocchino et al 2009). Some of these studies are carried out on representatives of the Italian fauna, others are based on more or less "exotic" corners of the world.…”