Discovery of a new mammal species (Soricidae: Eulipotyphla) from Narcondam volcanic island, India (original) (raw)

We discovered a new Crocidura species of shrew (Soricidae: Eulipotyphla) from Narcondam Island, India by using both morphological and molecular approaches. The new species, Crocidura narcondamica sp. nov. is of medium size (head and body lengths) and has a distinct external morphology (darker grey dense fur with a thick, darker tail) and craniodental characters (braincase is rounded and elevated with weak lambdoidal ridges) in comparison to other close congeners. This is the first discovery of a shrew from this volcanic island and increases the total number of Crocidura species catalogued in the Indian checklist of mammals to 12. The newly discovered species shows substantial genetic distances (12.02% to 16.61%) to other Crocidura species known from the Indian mainland, the Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago, Myanmar, and from Sumatra. Both Maximum-Likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic inferences, based on mitochondrial (cytochrome b) gene sequences showed distinct clustering of all inc...

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