''Macroscelides flavicaudatus'' (common name: Namib round-eared sengi or Namib round-eared elephant shrew) is a species of

elephant shrew Elephant shrews, also called jumping shrews or sengis, are small insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order Macroscelidea. Their traditional common English name "elephant shrew" comes from a pe ...

in the family Macroscelididae found in the central

Namib desert The Namib ( ; pt, Namibe) is a coastal desert in Southern Africa. The name is of Khoekhoegowab origin and means "vast place". According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Namib ...

and southern

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and e ...

Discovery and identification

''Macroscelides flavicaudatus'' was first described by Lundholm as ''Macroscelides proboscideus flavicaudatus'', a subspecies of '' M. proboscideus''. The

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes the ...

had been collected by the Plague Research Laboratory of the

South African Institute for Medical Research The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) is a South African national government institution established in 2001. It was created by merging the South African Institute for Medical Research (SAIMR), the National Centre for Occupational Health ...

, "six miles from the mouth of the

Omaruru River The Omaruru River is a major river crossing the Erongo Region of western central Namibia from East to West. It originates in the Etjo Mountains, crosses the town of Omaruru and the village of Okombahe, and reaches the sea a few kilometers no ...

" in Namibia. It is distinguished by the lighter coloration of its fur. Nine other subspecies of ''M. proboscideus'' had previously been described; while Corbet and Hanks dismissed the variation between these as

continuous Continuity or continuous may refer to: Mathematics * Continuity (mathematics), the opposing concept to discreteness; common examples include ** Continuous probability distribution or random variable in probability and statistics ** Continuous g ...

, they retained ''M. p. flavicaudatus''. Upon genetic and morphological analysis, Dumbacher ''et al.'' found that the two subspecies were significantly divergent, and proposed elevating both to the rank of

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

References

Elephant shrews Mammals of Namibia Endemic fauna of Namibia Mammals described in 1955 {{macroscelidea-stub