Two New Pocket Gophers from Wyoming and Colorado   By: H. Gordon Montague

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Two New Pocket Gophers from Wyoming and Colorado

BY

E. RAYMOND HALL and H. GORDON MONTAGUE

University of Kansas Publications

Museum of Natural History

Volume 5, No. 3, pp. 25 32

February 28, 1951

University of Kansas

LAWRENCE

1951

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Edward H. Taylor, A. Byron Leonard, Robert W. Wilson

Volume 5, No. 3, pp. 25 32

February 28, 1951

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

Lawrence, Kansas

PRINTED BY FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1951

23 6627

Two New Pocket Gophers from Wyoming and Colorado

BY

E. RAYMOND HALL AND H. GORDON MONTAGUE

In the academic year of 1947 48 Montague studied the geographic variation in Thomomys talpoides of Wyoming. His study was based upon materials then in the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. Publication of the results was purposely delayed until previously reported specimens from certain adjacent areas, especially in Colorado, could be examined. In the autumn of 1950 one of us, Hall, was able to examine the specimens from Colorado; also, the specimens from Wyoming accumulated in the past two seasons of field work in Wyoming were examined by Hall. A result of these studies is the recognition of two heretofore unnamed subspecies of the northern pocket gopher in southeastern Wyoming.

Grateful acknowledgment is made of the opportunity to study the Coloradon specimens in the Biological Surveys Collection of the United States National Museum, and of the financial assistance from the Kansas University Endowment Association which permitted the field work in Wyoming.

Descriptions and names for the two new subspecies are given below:

=Thomomys talpoides rostralis= new subspecies

Type. Female, adult, skull and skin, no. 17096 Mus. Nat. Hist., Univ. Kansas; from 1 mi. E Laramie, 7164 ft., Albany County, Wyoming; obtained on July 16, 1945, by C. Howard Westman; original no. 320.

Range. Southern Wyoming and south in the mountains of Colorado to the Arkansas River but not including the Colorado River drainage except in Grand County and part of Routt County.

Diagnosis. Size medium (see measurements); upper parts ranging from between Cinnamon Rufous and Hazel (capitalized terms are of Ridgway, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, Washington, D. C., 1912) in the eastern part of the range to between Argus Brown and Brussels Brown in the western part of the range; sides Cinnamon Rufous; throat whitish; remainder of under parts whitish, in many specimens tipped with Ochraceous Buff; feet and tail whitish; rostrum long; nasals ordinarily truncate posteriorly; temporal ridges nearly parallel; interpterygoid space broadly V shaped.

Comparisons. From Thomomys talpoides clusius (topotypes), T. t. rostralis differs in: Body longer; color more reddish (lighter with less brownish and more ochraceous); rostrum both longer and broader, actually and also in relation to length of the skull; skull broader interorbitally; upper molariform tooth row longer; tympanic bullae less inflated. For comparison with T. t. attenuatus to the east, see the account of that subspecies.