The broad-striped Malagasy mongoose or broad-striped vontsira (''Galidictis fasciata'') is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of 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 the appropriat ...

Galidiinae Galidiinae is a subfamily of carnivorans that is restricted to Madagascar and includes six species classified into four genera. Together with the three other species of indigenous Malagasy carnivorans, including the fossa, they are currently cla ...

, a subfamily of mongoose-like euplerids native to

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Afric ...

. The species contains two known subspecies: ''Galidictis fasciata fasciata'' and ''Galidictis fasciata striata''. Their main distinguishing factors are their stripes and their tails; ''G. f. fasciata'' has a fuller, reddish-brown tail and 8-10 stripes, while ''G. f. striata'' has a thinner, white tail and 5 stripes. They are all forest-dweller on the eastern side of the island, and their primary prey is small

rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are n ...

s. This species is most active in the evening and at night. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bo ...

'' fasciata'' means ‘banded’ in Latin. Its local common name is ''vontsira fotsy'', ‘white ''

vontsira Galidiinae is a subfamily of carnivorans that is restricted to Madagascar and includes six species classified into four genera. Together with the three other species of indigenous Malagasy carnivorans, including the fossa, they are currently cla ...

''’ in Malagasy.Blench, Roger and Martin Walsh: ''Faunal names in Malagasy: their etymologies and implications for the prehistory of the East African coast (2009)
Re-linked 2014-08-13

References

Euplerids Endemic fauna of Madagascar Carnivorans of Africa Mammals of Madagascar Mammals described in 1788 Taxa named by Johann Friedrich Gmelin {{carnivora-stub