The Oriental Basin pocket gopher (''Cratogeomys fulvescens'') is a species of

pocket gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...

which is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to Mexico. It was first described in 1895 by

Clinton Hart Merriam Clinton Hart Merriam (December 5, 1855 – March 19, 1942) was an American zoologist, mammalogist, ornithologist, entomologist, ecologist, ethnographer, geographer, naturalist and physician. He was commonly known as the 'father of mammalogy', a ...

. It was considered to be a subspecies of

Merriam's pocket gopher Merriam's pocket gopher (''Cratogeomys merriami'') is a species of rodent in the family Geomyidae. It is endemic to Mexico, where it is found in the area of the Valley of Mexico and the Valley of Toluca at elevations from 1800 to 4000 m. Its fav ...

(''Cratogeomys merriami'') in the late 20th and early 21st century but has been reinstated as its own species. The

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

has evaluated it to be of

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

Description

''C. fulvescens'' is mid-sized for the genus ''Cratogeomys'' and exhibits

sexual dimorphism Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most ani ...

in size. Adult males weigh of and adult females weigh . Its fur coloration is "grizzled yellowish-brown" with "a strong mixture of black-tipped hairs"; the underside is paler than the dorsal fur. The cranial width of its skull is typically less than , making it small for the genus. The

dental formula Dentition pertains to the development of teeth and their arrangement in the mouth. In particular, it is the characteristic arrangement, kind, and number of teeth in a given species at a given age. That is, the number, type, and morpho-physiolo ...

is . Each upper incisor has a longitudinal groove along its anterior surface. The total body length is .

Distribution

This species is

to a small region in the southern half of Mexico. Its range is in the

Oriental Basin The Oriental Basin, also known as the Libres-Oriental Basin, Oriental-Serdán Basin or San Juan Plains (in Spanish, ''Llanos de San Juan'' or ''Cuenca de Libres-Oriental)'' is an endorheic basin in east-central Mexico. It covers an area of 4,958.60 ...

of the

Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt ( es, Eje Volcánico Transversal), also known as the Transvolcanic Belt and locally as the (''Snowy Mountain Range''), is an active volcanic belt that covers central-southern Mexico. Several of its highest peaks h ...

, and is within the Mexican states of

Puebla Puebla ( en, colony, settlement), officially Free and Sovereign State of Puebla ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 217 municipalities and its cap ...

Tlaxcala Tlaxcala (; , ; from nah, Tlaxcallān ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tlaxcala ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Tlaxcala), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 60 municipaliti ...

, and

Veracruz Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...

. The elevation in its distribution spans . Merriam noted the type locality as: "Chalchicomula, State of Puebla, Mexico"; this city is now known as

Ciudad Serdán Ciudad Serdán (formerly St. Andres Chalchicomula) is the municipal seat of Chalchicomula de Sesma Municipality in the Mexican state of Puebla. Its geographical coordinates are 18° 59′ North, and 97° 27′ West. Its average altitude is 2,5 ...

. The type locality for the formerly-recognized subspecies ''C. f. subluteus'' is

Perote, Veracruz Perote is a city and municipality in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It serves as the seat of government for the surrounding municipality of the same name, which borders on Las Vigas de Ramírez, Acajete, Xico and Tlalnelhuayocan, and the state ...

Taxonomic history

The American zoologist

wrote the

species description A species description is a formal description of a newly discovered species, usually in the form of a scientific paper. Its purpose is to give a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differs from species that have be ...

for ''C. fulvescens'' in 1895. Merriam based his description on eleven specimens from

and

Veracruz, Mexico Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...

. In Merriam's classification of ''Cratogeomys'', ''C. fulvescens'' was grouped with '' C. castanops'' on the basis of cranial morphology. In 1968, Robert J. Russell reclassified ''Cratogeomys'' to be a subgenus of ''

Pappogeomys Buller's pocket gopher (''Pappogeomys bulleri'') is a species of gopher that is endemic to Mexico. It is monotypic within the genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and ...

''. Russell also analyzed Merriam's ''C. fulvescens'' as being a subspecies of what was in his work called '' Pappogeomys Cratogeomys merriami''. Russell stated that of the seven subspecies he recognized for ''P.'' (''C.'') ''merriami'', "the most divergent" was ''P.'' (''C.'') ''m. fulvescens'' due to differences in coloration, size, and cranial morphology. This classification in E. Raymond Hall's 1981 ''The Mammals of North America'' also used the combination ''P.'' (''C.'') ''m. fulvescens'' for this taxon. ''Cratogeomys'' was reinstated as a genus in 1982; the third edition of ''

Mammal Species of the World ''Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference'' is a standard reference work in mammalogy giving descriptions and bibliographic data for the known species of mammals. It is now in its third edition, published in late 2005, ...

'' refers to this taxon as ''C. m. fulvescens''. ''C. fulvescens'' was reinstated as its own species in 2005 due to a genetic and morphological study by Mark S. Hafner and colleagues. They placed it in the ''C. castanops''

species group In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

. No subspecies are presently recognized. A subspecies, ''C. f. subluteus'' had been described in 1934 by

Edward William Nelson Edward William Nelson (May 8, 1855 – May 19, 1934) was an American naturalist and ethnologist. A collector of specimens and field naturalist of repute, he became a member of several expeditions to survey the fauna and flora. He was part o ...

and

Edward Alphonso Goldman Edward Alphonso Goldman (July 7, 1873 – September 2, 1946) was an American zoologist and botanist. He worked extensively in Mexico with Edward William Nelson and described and revised many groups of mammals. He was born Edward Alphonso Goltman i ...

. This subspecies was also known by the common names "yellow pocket gopher" and "fulvous pocket gopher". The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

s for ''C. fulvescens'' and for ''C. f. subluteus'' are both in the collections of the U.S.

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

, Washington, DC. Each specimen consists of its preserved skin and its skull. Nelson and Goldman collected both holotypes: The ''C. fulvescens'' holotype was collected in 1894, and the ''C. f. subluteus'' holotype was collected in 1893. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

(, "yellowing") is the Latin present participle of the

inchoative Inchoative aspect (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical aspect, referring to the beginning of a state. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages such as Latin and Lithuanian, and also in Finnic languages or European derived languages w ...

form of the verb meaning "to become tawny". The epithet of its formerly recognized subspecies, (), is a Latin adjective meaning "yellowish". The common name for the species, Oriental Basin pocket gopher, refers to the

in Mexico, where it is found. Its common name in Spanish is .

Biology

''C. fulvescenss diet consists of

rhizomes In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...

bulbs In botany, a bulb is structurally a short stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs durin ...

, and roots. Pregnancy has been observed from December through February. Because pregnancy was not observed in July, it is thought they only have one litter each year. Two species of

chewing lice The Mallophaga are a possibly paraphyletic section of lice Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been reco ...

in the genus '' Geomydoecus'' have ''C. fulvescens'' as a host: '' G. fulvescens'' and '' G. veracruzensis''. Both species were described in 1971 by Roger D. Price and K. C. Emerson. The

flea Flea, the common name for the order Siphonaptera, includes 2,500 species of small flightless insects that live as external parasites of mammals and birds. Fleas live by ingesting the blood of their hosts. Adult fleas grow to about long, a ...

species '' Dasypsyllus megasoma'' and '' Meringis altipecten'' were also observed on ''C. fulvescens''; although it is thought the presence of ''M. altipecten'' is thought to have been accidental rather than due to being a typical ectoparasite for the species. The

nematode The nematodes ( or grc-gre, Νηματώδη; la, Nematoda) or roundworms constitute the phylum Nematoda (also called Nemathelminthes), with plant-Parasitism, parasitic nematodes also known as eelworms. They are a diverse animal phylum inhab ...

species '' Vexillata convoluta'' is also a parasite of ''C. fulvescens''.

Genetics

Its

diploid number Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Sets of chromosomes refer to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, respective ...

is 2n=40 and its

fundamental number A karyotype is the general appearance of the complete set of metaphase chromosomes in the cells of a species or in an individual organism, mainly including their sizes, numbers, and shapes. Karyotyping is the process by which a karyotype is disce ...

is FN=72. ''C. fulvescens'' contains an

autapomorphic In phylogenetics, an autapomorphy is a distinctive feature, known as a derived trait, that is unique to a given taxon. That is, it is found only in one taxon, but not found in any others or outgroup taxa, not even those most closely related to t ...

allele for the gene

RAG1 Recombination activating gene 1 also known as RAG-1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''RAG1'' gene. The RAG1 and RAG2 genes are largely conserved in humans. 55.99% and 55.98% of the encoded amino acids contain no reported variants, re ...

distinguishing it from '' C. perotensis'' and ''C. merriami''.

Conservation status and relationship with humans

The

has classified this species as a

least-concern species A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

, and

SEMARNAT The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (in Spanish: ''Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, SEMARNAT'') is Mexico's environment ministry. Its head, the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources, is a member ...

did not include it in its 2010 list of threatened or endangered mammals of Mexico. Although its observed habitat is less than , it is believed to be "common and adaptable". Part of its range is affected by habitat loss due to human expansion. ''C. fulvescens'' were found as

roadkill Roadkill is an animal or animals that have been struck and killed by drivers of motor vehicles on highways. Wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC) have increasingly been the topic of academic research to understand the causes, and how it can be mi ...

along a highway going through its range. Mark S. Hafner wrote there ought to be further studies on its conservation status, particularly as its geographic range is smaller than that of other Mexican pocket gophers. ''C. fulvescens'' have been observed in farmland and might be considered to be a pest as they destroy crops including wheat, corn, and beans.

References

Works cited

* {{taxonbar, from=Q2070345, from2=Q20904648 Cratogeomys Taxa named by Clinton Hart Merriam Mammals described in 1895 Endemic mammals of Mexico Fauna of Central Mexico