Heliosciurus gambianus ( Ogilby, 1835 )

Denys, Christiane, Missoup, Alain Didier, Nicolas, Violaine, Sylla, Morlaye, Douno, Mory, Kadjo, Blaise, Lalis, Aude & Monadjem, Ara, 2025, Annotated checklist of rodents from a biodiversity hotspot, Mount Nimba (West Africa), Zoosystema 47 (27), pp. 617-689 : 654

Heliosciurus gambianus ( Ogilby, 1835)

Sciurus gambianus Ogilby, 1835: 103 .

REMARKS

Heliosciurus gambianus is distinguished from the two other West African species by a light grey-brown ventral pelage as opposed to H. punctatus which has a dark ventral pelage and from H. rufobrachium which displays brown red-ventral pelage especially under forearms and hindlegs. Heliosciurus punctatus was described in Mount Nimba as a subspecies of H. gambianus by Misonne & Verschuren (1976) and Coe (1975) who reported its presence from the Liberian side of the mountain. In the MNHN collections we recovered some specimens attributed to H. gambianus and others to H. punctatus that allow to conclude that both species occur on Mount Nimba.

The specimens attributed to H. gambianus (MNHN-ZM-1986-91, 1986-93 and 1983-94) display a light grey dorsal pelage and the belly is light brown-yellow not contrasting with the dorsal pelage speckled with white and brown hair. The tail is long and harbors some black ridges and a black tip; the feet are white. This morphology fits well with Rosevear’s (1969) and Monadjem et al. ’s (2015) descriptions of H. gambianus . No external measurements were provided with the Nimba specimens. No skull was found associated with the Nimba specimens so we could not document their morphology and size. According to Monadjem et al. (2015), the GLS of the skull is between 42.5 and 51.6 mm, with an average of 47.4 mm.