Subspeciation in Pocket Gophers of Kansas

By
BERNARDO VILLA-R. and E. RAYMOND HALL

University of Kansas Publications
Museum of Natural History

Volume 1, No. 11. pp. 217-236
November 29, 1947

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
LAWRENCE
1947

University of Kansas Publications Museum of Natural History
Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, H. H. Lane, and Edward H. Taylor
Volume 1, No 11. pp. 217-236
Published November 29, 1947

University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas

PRINTED BY
FRED VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER
TOPEKA, KANSAS
  1947

21-8188

Subspeciation in Pocket Gophers of Kansas

By

BERNARDO VILLA-R. AND E. RAYMOND HALL

[219]Several full species of the genus Geomys have been recorded fromKansas. The purpose of the study now reported upon was to determinethe present taxonomic status of these animals and the distributionof each within the boundaries of Kansas. No pocketgopher of any kind has been reported from the southeastern part ofthe state; in all other parts Geomys is locally common.

HISTORY

The first published reference that we have found to pocket gophersof Kansas is Prof. Spencer F. Baird's (1857:377, 380) mentionof two specimens from Fort Riley. One he identified as Geomysbursarius (p. 377) and the other (p. 380) he doubtfully referred toGeomys breviceps. Both specimens were obtained by Dr. W. A.Hammond. J. A. Allen (1874:49) reported pocket gophers fromKansas under the generic name "Geomys?". Professor M. V. B.Knox (1875:21) published a list of Kansas mammals in which heused the names Geomys bursarius Shaw and Geomys brevicepsBaird, the last one for the specimen taken by Dr. Hammond, atFort Riley. Baker (1889:57) employed the name Geomys bursariusRich. for the gopher "found along the hundredth meridian, betweenN latitude 38° 30' and 39° 30'." He reported this animal as commonin western Kansas. Merriam (1895:129) recorded G. bursariusand G. lutescens from Kansas. Allen (1895:265) recorded fivespecimens of Geomys lutescens collected between September 16 andOctober 13 at Long Island, Phillips County, Kansas, by W. W.Granger. Since that time several papers, some of them dealingmostly with habits of pocket gophers, have been published in whichreference is made to Geomys in Kansas. Hibbard (1933:240) recognizedthree species: G. bursarius, G. lutescens, and G. brevicepsllanensis. In 1944 (74-75) he recorded Cratogeomys from MeadeCounty, on the basis of two skulls dug out of the ground, and herecognized the same three full species of the genus Geomys that hedid in 1933, along with two additional subspecies.

Specimens to the total number of 335 from Kansas have beenavailable for the present study of the five subspecies recognized.The reason for arranging all of the named kinds as subspecies of asingle species is that intergradation has been found to occur between[220]every pair of kinds having contiguous geographic ranges. Thecharacters previously thought by some writers constantly to differentiate,say, Geomys lutescens of western Kansas from G