Common names: Red Veld Rat (English). This species is widely distributed in the savannah habitats of southern and East Africa, being found from southern Kenya to northern South Africa, but may be replaced in South Africa by A. ineptus (Monadjem et al. 2015). Specifically, it occurs in Namibia, excluding the western desert regions, and is widely distributed throughout Zimbabwe (Skinner and Chimimba 2005). Although the species has also been positively identified in Francistown, Botswana (Russo et al. 2006), veld rats from Mozambique have not been positively identified but it seems likely that the distributional range of A. chrysophilus includes both northern Botswana and southern Mozambique (Linzey et al. 2003). The most important phylogeographic structure is the Kafue–Limpopo river system that divides all mitochondrial sequences into two main groups (J. Bryja unpubl. data). The southern lineage is then subdivided into several clades, one of them being A. ineptus, and it is possible that the Limpopo River played an important role in the split between A. chrysophilus and A. ineptus.