Species of carnivore
The brown-tailed mongoose, brown-tailed vontsira, Malagasy brown-tailed mongoose, or salano (Salanoia concolor) is a species of mammal in the family Eupleridae. It is endemic to Madagascar. Its natural habitat is moist lowland tropical forest. It is threatened by habitat loss.[2]
Taxonomy
The brown-tailed mongoose was first described in 1837 by French zoologist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire under the names Galidia unicolor and Galidia olivacea. He placed both in the genus Galidia, together with the ring-tailed mongoose (Galidia elegans),[3] which is now recognized as the only species of that genus.[4] However, the name unicolor had been a misprint for concolor, and the name was corrected in an erratum and in a later note by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.[5] In 1865,[Note 1] John Edward Gray placed concolor and olivacea in their own subgenus of Galidia, which he called Salanoia.[7] In 1882, St. George Jackson Mivart also separated olivacea and concolor from Galidia, and placed them in a separate genus Hemigalidia, without mentioning Salanoia.[8] In his 1904 Index generum mammalium, Palmer noted that Salanoia, the first name to be published, was the proper name for the genus.[9] Although Glover Morrill Allen, in 1939, still listed two species, which he called Salanoia olivacea and S. unicolor,[10] by 1972 R. Albignac recognized a single species only, which he called Salanoia concolor.[11] A second species of Salanoia, Salanoia durrelli, was described in 2010.[12]
