Introduction According to Aulagnier and Thévenot (1986a), and Hutterer (1986), five species of the genus Crocidura are known from Morocco. Two of these are common and well known through earlier studies. The greater white-toothed shrew Crocidura russula has a northern distribution (Vogel and Maddalena 1987, Vogel et al. 2003, Brändli et al. 2005, Cosson et al. 2005). By contrast, the savanna path shrew C. viaria, formerly called C. bolivari, is restricted to the south (Heim de Balsac 1968, Aulagnier and Thévenot 1986a, Vogel et al. 1988, 2000), occur- ring north and south of the Sahara (Hutterer 1993, 2005, Maddalena 1990a, b). Our knowledge of the ecology and phylogenetic relationships of the three other species remains relatively poor. The Mauritanian shrew C. lusitania is a small and rare species, with a main distribution south of the Sahara. The Whitaker’s shrew C. whi- [353] Acta Theriologica 51 (4): 353–361, 2006. PL ISSN 0001–7051 Habitat, morphology and karyotype of the Saharan shrew Crocidura tarfayaensis (Mammalia: Soricidae) Peter VOGEL, Anne-Marie MEHMETI, Sylvain DUBEY, Charlotte VOGEL-GERBER, Kazuhiro KOYASU and Mohammed RIBI Vogel P., Mehmeti A.-M., Dubey S., Vogel-Gerber C., Koyasu K. and Ribi M. 2006. Habitat, morphology and karyotype of the Saharan shrew Crocidura tarfayaensis (Mammalia: Soricidae). Acta Theriologica 51: 353–361. The Saharan shrew Crocidura tarfayaensis Vesmanis and Vesmanis, 1980, has a limited disribution along the Atlantic coast of Sahara, south of Agadir (Morocco) through Western Sahara into Mauritania and is only known from few captures and some owl pellets. Here we report field data from the successful trapping of five specimens of C. tarfayaensis in the Guelmim region. The habitat was characterized by sand dunes along a river, with dense shrubberies of Tamarix sp., the huge grass Erianthus ravennae (Poaceae) and flat bushes of Atriplex glauca var. ifniensis (Chenopodiaceae). Morphological discrimination with C. whitakeri were examined. The chromosomes of C. tarfayaensis revealed a karyotype of 2n = 36, similar to that of the Canary shrew C. canariensis and the Sicilian shrew C. sicula. In conclusion, C. tar- fayaensis seems to be a descendant of the presumed continental ancestor of the two island species. Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, e-mail address: peter.vogel@unil.ch (PV, AMM, SD, CVG, KK), School of Dentistery, Aichi-Gaukin University, Nagoya 464-8650, Japan (KK), Haut Commissariat aux Eaux et ForLts et B la Lutte Contre la Désertification, Agdal – Rabat, Morocco (MR) Key words: Crocidura tarfayaensis, Crocidura canariensis, Crocidura sicula, cytotaxonomy, ecology, Morocco