Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Sciuridae > Spermophilus > Spermophilus pygmaeusSpermophilus pygmaeus (little ground squirrel)Synonyms: Citellus pygmaeus; Mus pygmaeus (homotypic) The little ground squirrel or little souslik, (Spermophilus pygmaeus) is a species of rodent in the family Sciuridae. It is found mostly in Central Asia east to the Aral Sea. The subspecies include Spermophilus pygmaeus pygmaeus, Spermophilus pygmaeus brauneri, Spermophilus pygmaeus herbicolus and Spermophilus pygmaeus mugosaricus. The Caucasian mountain ground squirrel (Spermophilus musicus) is now considered to be a separate species. |
Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) Unique (100) Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) Unique & Vulnerable (100) ED Score: 2.85 EDGE Score: 1.35 |
| Adult Weight [1] | 136 grams |  | | Diet [2] | Carnivore (Invertebrates), Granivore, Herbivore | | Diet - Invertibrates [2] | 20 % | | Diet - Plants [2] | 40 % | | Diet - Seeds [2] | 40 % | | Forages - Ground [2] | 100 % | | | Gestation [1] | 27 days | | Litter Size [1] | 7.1 | | Litters / Year [1] | 1 | | Maximum Longevity [1] | 7 years | | Snout to Vent Length [3] | 16 inches (41 cm) |
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| Name |
Countries |
Ecozone |
Biome |
Species |
Report |
Climate |
Land
Use |
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Caspian lowland desert |
Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran |
Palearctic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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Central Asian northern desert |
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan |
Palearctic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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Central Asian riparian woodlands |
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan |
Palearctic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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Crimean Submediterranean forest complex |
Russia, Ukraine |
Palearctic |
Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests |
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East European forest steppe |
Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Ukraine |
Palearctic |
Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests |
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Kazakh forest steppe |
Russia, Kazakhstan |
Palearctic |
Temperate Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands |
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Kazakh semi-desert |
Kazakhstan |
Palearctic |
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands |
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Kazakh steppe |
Russia, Kazakhstan |
Palearctic |
Temperate Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands |
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Pontic steppe |
Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine |
Palearctic |
Temperate Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands |
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| Name |
Location |
Endemic |
Species |
Website |
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Caucasus |
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Turkey |
No |
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Attributes / relations provided by ♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774 ♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027 ♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109 ♦ 4Relationship between demographics and diet specificity of Imperial Eagles Aquila heliaca in Kazakhstan, TODD E. KATZNER, EVGENY A. BRAGIN, STEVEN T. KNICK & ANDREW T. SMITH, Ibis (2005), 147, 576586 ♦ 55.5 Corsac, Vulpes corsac, A. Poyarkov and N. Ovsyanikov, Sillero-Zubiri, C., Hoffmann, M. and Macdonald, D.W. (eds). 2004. Canids: Foxes, Wolves, Jackals and Dogs. Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan. IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. x + 430 pp. ♦ 6International Flea DatabaseEcoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database |
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0
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