Two New Pocket Gophers from Wyoming and Colorado

The authors describe two previously unnamed subspecies of the northern pocket gopher from southeastern Wyoming and adjacent Colorado, based on museum collections and recent fieldwork. They give type specimen details, concise morphological diagnoses, and comparative measurements emphasizing skull, rostrum, tooth-row, bullae, and pelage differences from nearby subspecies. Geographic variation and a westward color cline are documented, specimen localities and totals are listed, and provisional range boundaries are proposed while noting gaps in southwestern Colorado sampling. The paper recommends further collecting to refine subspecific limits and explains the basis for the taxonomic decisions.