Idiurus macrotis Miller, 1898

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 : 657

Idiurus macrotis Miller, 1898

Idiurus macrotis Miller, 1898: 15 .

REMARKS

The long-eared scaly-tailed flying squirrel was not captured during our recent surveys but was collected by Coe (1975) in Liberia and Forbes-Watson (unpublished) confirmed their presence in Grassfield ( Liberia) and collected nine specimens. In NMK we examined four specimens (NMK540, 393, 539, and 560) ( Appendix 7). It was neither recorded by Lamotte and collaborators nor by Roche (1971) in Seredou ( Guinea). More recent records in the region were accidentally captured with bat nets in 2010 in the Putu Mountains of Liberia and in 2009 at Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone ( Decher & Weber 2015). The size and shape variability of this rare rodent was studied by Schunke & Hutterer (2007) who demonstrated that only I. macrotis is present in West Africa. In West Africa, the species occurs in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria, then in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, and disjunct in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Tanzania ( Schunke & Hutterer 2007).

Idiurus macrotis is characterized by a relative small size and the presence of a flight membrane between limbs and enclosing the tail. The tail is longer than HB, with long hair ending in a tuft of sparse and not very dense long hairs. The dorsal pelage is pale grey-brown and there is no color difference to the ventral side. The GLS of the skull in West Africa is between 24.8 and 26.8 mm ( Table 11 ).