Order Rodentia - Family Sciuridae Author Wilson, Don E. Author Reeder, DeeAnn text 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2 754 818 book chapter 0-8018-8221-4 10.5281/zenodo.7316535 Spermophilus (Spermophilus) xanthoprymnus Bennett 1835 Spermophilus (Spermophilus) xanthoprymnus Bennett 1835 , Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1835: 90 . Type Locality: " Erzurum " [ Turkey ]. Vernacular Names: Asia Minor Ground Squirrel . Synonyms: Spermophilus (Spermophilus) schmidti (Satunin 1908) . Distribution: Transcaucasia ( Armenia , possibly Azerbaijan ), Turkey , Syria , and Israel . Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc). Discussion: Subgenus Spermophilus ( Gromov et al. 1965:237 ) . Regarded by Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951:506) and Corbet (1978 c :83) as a synonym of citellus ; but see Vasil'eva (1961) , Gromov et al. (1965:237) , and Vorontsov and Lyapunova (1970) , who provided evidence of specific distinctness. Molecular sequence data suggest that this species may form a clade together with dauricus and suslicus ( Harrison et al., 2003 ) . Karyotypes analyzed by Doğramaci et al. (1994 a ).