Somalian gerbil

The Somalian gerbil (Gerbillus somalicus) is a small rodent of the subfamily Gerbillinae in the family Muridae. It is known only from Djibouti and Somalia in the Horn of Africa, and the Mammal Diversity Database places it in the Afrotropic biogeographic realm. It was described by Oldfield Thomas in 1910 as Dipodillus somalicus from a holotype collected at Upper Sheikh in Somaliland, and it has since been moved into the genus Gerbillus, within the subgenus Dipodillus, on the strength of a molecular study of the genus. The Mammal Diversity Database lists it as a living species and records Somalian dipodil as another common name; the IUCN Red List status is shown there as not evaluated.