Kingdom Animalia Class Mammalia Family Sciuridae Rank Species | Phylum Chordata Order Rodentia Genus Ictidomys | |
Similar Spermophilus brevicauda, Spermophilus pallidicauda, Texas antelope squirrel, Sierra Madre ground s, Spermophilus relictus | ||
Ictidomys parvidens is a species of squirrel in the family Sciuridae.
All the species of Ictidomys were previously believed to belong to the much larger genus Spermophilus (I. parvidens as a subspecies of Spermophilus mexicanus), but DNA sequencing of the cytochrome b gene showed that this group was paraphyletic to the prairie dogs and marmots, and could therefore no longer be retained as a single genus. As a result, Ictidomys is now considered a genus in its own right.
References
Ictidomys parvidens Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA