Abstract
Five-toed jerboas are bipedal rodents, which inhabit arid areas of Palaearctic Eurasia and North-East Africa. Three genera and about 15 species are recognised. The main goals of this study were: (1) to estimate the levels and trends of specialisation of the five-toed jerboas, (2) to reconstruct the course of their adaptive evolution. The results confirm that the adaptive evolution of Allactaginae goes in two main directions – towards fast bipedal locomotion and towards an herbivorous diet. Three main ecological types of Allactaginae were revealed: (1) relatively slow running herbivores (Pygeretmus platyurus and P. shitkovi), (2) fast running herbivores (P. pumilio) and (3) fast running granivores (Allactaga, Allactodipus). The results of this research support the hypothesis that the genus Pygeretmus represents an advanced lineage which evolved from an Allactaga-like morphological construction.
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