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

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manokaran Kamalakannan ◽  
Chandrakasan Sivaperuman ◽  
Shantanu Kundu ◽  
Govindarasu Gokulakrishnan ◽  
Chinnadurai Venkatraman ◽  
...  

AbstractWe 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 included soricid species and exhibit congruence with the previous evolutionary hypothesis on this mammalian group. The present phylogenetic analyses also furnished the evolutionary placement of the newly discovered species within the genus Crocidura.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manokaran Kamalakannan ◽  
Chandrakasan Sivaperuman ◽  
Shantanu Kundu ◽  
Govindarusu Gokulakrishnan ◽  
Chinnadurai Venkatraman ◽  
...  

Abstract The present study discovered the existence of 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 medium-sized and has a distinct external morphology (darker-grey dense fur with a thick and darker tail) and craniodental (braincase is rounded and elevated with weak lambdoidal ridges) characters in comparison with other close congeners. This description illuminates the first discovery of soricid fauna (shrew) from this volcanic island and a total of 12 Crocidura species catalogued in the Indian checklist of mammals. The newly discovered species maintained sufficient genetic distances (12% to 16.6%) with other Crocidura species known from the Indian mainland, Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago, and Myanmar. Both Maximum-Likelihood and Bayesian phylogeny showed distinct clustering of all soricid species and exhibited congruence with the previous evolutionary hypothesis. The present phylogenetic analyses also furnished the oldest evolutionary lineages of this newly discovered species in comparison with other congeners, which assumed to be possible colonization of this species due to immature radiation in Narcondam Island.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-139
Author(s):  
Shuo Liu ◽  
Mian Hou ◽  
Ye Htet Lwin ◽  
Qiaoyan Wang ◽  
Dingqi Rao

A new species of the genus Gonyosoma Wagler is described from Yunnan Province, China. The new species closely resembles G. prasinum (Blyth), but it is differentiated from the latter species by the following characters: precloacal plate divided, iris blue and inside of mouth greyish-white in life. Based on phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequence data, the new species is recovered as the sister species to G. prasinum by Bayesian Inference and Maximum Likelihood analyses. The uncorrected pairwise distance between the new species and other species of the genus Gonyosoma ranged from 11.78% to 17.07% calculated using the mitochondrial cytochrome b sequence. This discovery increases the number of Gonyosoma species to seven.


Zootaxa ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2903 (1) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
HYUCK JOON KWUN ◽  
JIN KOO KIM

A new species of the genus Albula of the family Albulidae is described based on five specimens collected from Korea and Taiwan. Its new scientific name, Albula koreana sp. nov., is derived from its type locality (Korea). We compared Albula koreana sp. nov. with its similar species, A. argentea from Fiji (seven specimens), using morphological and molecular methods. Albula koreana sp. nov. differs morphologically from A. argentea in its tooth patch distributions on the mesopterygoids and parasphenoid. The tooth patches on the mesopterygoids are distributed more anteriorly than those on the parasphenoid in Albula koreana sp. nov. On the other hand, the anterior end of the tooth patches on the mesopterygoids almost corresponds to that of the tooth patches on the parasphenoid in A. argentea. The numbers of vertebrae also differ between the two species (77–78 in Albula koreana sp. nov. vs 72–73 in A. argentea). We analyzed 546 base pairs of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequence, and the Albula koreana sp. nov. sequence differed considerably from that of A. argentea. Kimura’s genetic distances between them were very large (15.9%–16.4%), robustly supporting the new species Albula koreana sp. nov.


Zootaxa ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 1463 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
LEONORA P. COSTA ◽  
SILVIA E. PAVAN ◽  
YURI L.R. LEITE ◽  
VALÉRIA FAGUNDES

In the present paper, we describe Juliomys ossitenuis, a new species of sigmodontine rodent from the Altantic forest biodiversity hotspot in South America. This new species can be distinguished from the two congeners by clear morphological, molecular, and karyological characters. Juliomys ossitenuis is known from rain and semi-deciduous forests above 800 meters of altitude in southeastern Brazil, ranging from the state of Espírito Santo to São Paulo. Molecular phylogenetic analyses based on the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene confirmed that members of this new species form a well-supported monophyletic group, highly divergent from the other two species in the genus.


Zootaxa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2126 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARIM J. LEDESMA ◽  
FLORIAN A. WERNER ◽  
ANGEL E. SPOTORNO ◽  
LUIS H. ALBUJA

A new species of mountain viscacha, Lagidium ahuacaense, is described based on a specimen and a mitochondrial cytochrome b (cyt b) sequence obtained from a second individual from Cerro El Ahuaca, Loja Province, Ecuador. In several external and craniodental measurements, the new species differed significantly from the three congeneric species (greatest length of skull, basilar, nasal length, palatilar length, length of diastema, least interorbital breadth, breadth of rostrum and skull height). The cyt b sequence of the Ecuadorean viscacha differed by 14 exclusive nucleotide substitutions from all other sequences of Lagidium examined. Kimura 2-parameter (K2P) genetic distances of the Ecuadorean sequence were 8.1–11.0% to L. peruanum, 7.9–9.9% to L. viscacia and 9.7% to L. wolffsohni. The single known population of the newly described species may not comprise more than a few dozen individuals and warrants urgent conservation actions.


2009 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bianca de A Carvalho ◽  
Luiz F. B Oliveira ◽  
Margarete S Mattevi

The genus Thylamys Gray, 1843 lives in the central and southern portions of South America inhabiting open and shrub-like vegetation, from prairies to dry forest habitats in contrast to the preference of other Didelphidae genera for more mesic environments. Thylamys is a speciose genus including T. elegans (Waterhouse, 1839), T. macrurus (Olfers, 1818), T. pallidior (Thomas, 1902), T. pusillus (Desmarest, 1804), T. venustus (Thomas, 1902), T. sponsorius (Thomas, 1921), T. cinderella (Thomas, 1902), T. tatei (Handley, 1957), T. karimii (Petter, 1968), and T. velutinus (Wagner, 1842) species. Previous phylogenetic analyses in this genus did not include the Brazilian species T. karimii, which is widely distributed in this country. In this study, phylogenetic analyses were performed to establish the relationships among the Brazilian T. karimii and all other previously analyzed species. We used 402-bp fragments of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene, and the phylogeny estimates were conducted employing maximum parsimony (MP), maximum likelihood (ML), Bayesian (BY), and neighbor-joining (NJ). The topologies of the trees obtained in the different analyses were all similar and pointed out that T. karimii is the sister taxon of a group constituted of taxa from dry and arid environments named the dryland species. The dryland species consists of T. pusillus, T. pallidior, T. tatei, and T. elegans. The results of this work suggest five species groups in Thylamys. In one of them, T. velutinus and T. kariimi could constitute a sister group forming one Thylamys clade that colonized Brazil.


Zootaxa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4552 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
LESLEY S. DE SOUZA ◽  
DONALD C. TAPHORN ◽  
JONATHAN W. ARMBRUSTER

The Orinoco Andes and northwestern Guiana Shield (Essequibo, Orinoco, Branco, and upper Negro) were found to contain 11 species of Ancistrus, six of which are new. We additionally examine A. brevifilis from the Río Tuy of Venezuela and A. trinitatis from the island of Trinidad. The species in the region can be broken up into dorsoventrally flattened species (A. leoni new species, A. lithurgicus, and A. macropthalmus), white to yellow-dotted species (A. kellerae new species, A. nudiceps, and A. patronus new species), wide-jawed species (A. amaris new species and A. yutajae new species), and white-spotted species (A. brevifilis, A. leucostictus, A. trinitatis, A. saudades new species, and A. triradiatus). Distributions of Ancistrus support the Proto-Berbice hypothesis as A. saudades is found in the upper reaches of the Ventuari, Caura, and Caroni rivers, which were thought to have once flowed into the Proto-Berbice. In addition, although A. nudiceps does not appear to have split once the Takutu River was captured by the Branco, the progenitor of A. leucostictus and A. saudades did speciate with the populations on either side of the Rupununi Portal differing by 7% sequence divergence of the mitochondrial Cytochrome b gene. Besides the descriptions of the new species, we redescribe the others occurring in the area, and adjacent watersheds. We provide a key for their identification, and a preliminary hypothesis of relationships based on DNA sequences of the few species for which tissue samples are available. 


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