Dipodidae

Incidentally, Dipodidae is sometimes used for the clade that includes birch mice and jumping mice, as well as jerboas.

Archive 2006-03-01 Darren Naish 2006

The name Dipodidae obviously comes from ‘dipodes’ meaning ‘two-footed’, the term apparently used for jerboas by Herodotus (writing some time around 430 B.C.).

Archive 2006-03-01 Darren Naish 2006

However most rodent workers seem to favour the use of the family-level name Zapodidae for birch mice and jumping mice, with Dipodidae restricted to jerboas proper.

Archive 2006-03-01 Darren Naish 2006

Coevolutionary events in the history of association between jerboas (Rodentia: Dipodidae) and their flea parasites.

Archive 2006-03-01 Darren Naish 2006

Dipodidae appears to have evolved in the Miocene from ‘a taxon at the sicistine/zapodine [viz, birch mouse/jumping mouse] level of evolutionary dental development’ (Martin 1994, p. 99).

Archive 2006-03-01 Darren Naish 2006

Phylogenetic studies demonstrate that Euchoreutes really is a jerboa, and not a rhinogradentian, and it’s traditionally been allocated its own ‘subfamily’ called Euchoreutinae Lyon, 1901 within the jerboa family Dipodidae Fischer de Waldheim, 1817.

Archive 2006-03-01 Darren Naish 2006

While few phylogenetic studies incorporate it (it is a very obscure and little-studied species), it is usually implied in classifications that it’s down at the base of the jerboa clade (properly called Dipodidae).

Archive 2006-03-01 Darren Naish 2006