Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 December 2021 | 13(14): 20295–20298
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7770.13.14.20295-20298
#7770 | Received 02 December 2021 | Finally
accepted 10 December 2021
New record of Kashmir Birch Mouse
Sicista concolor leathemi (Thomas, 1893) (Rodentia: Sminthidae)
in the Indian Himalaya
S.S. Talmale
1, Avtar Kaur Sidhu 2 & Uttam Saikia 3
1 Western Regional Centre,
Zoological Survey of India, Vidyanagar, Sector-29, Ravet
Road, Akurdi, Pune, Maharashtra 411044, India.
2 High Altitude Regional Centre,
Zoological Survey of India, Saproon, Solan, Himachal Pradesh 173211, India.
3 North Eastern Regional Centre,
Zoological Survey of India, Risa Colony, Shillong,
Meghalaya 793003, India.
1 s_talmale@yahoo.co.in
(corresponding author), 2 avtarkaur2000@gmail.com, 3 uttamzsi@gmail.com
Editor: Anonymity
requested. Date of publication:
26 December 2021 (online & print)
Citation: Talmale,
S.S., A.K. Sidhu & U. Saikia (2021). New record of Kashmir
Birch Mouse Sicista concolor
leathemi (Thomas, 1893) (Rodentia: Sminthidae) in the Indian Himalaya. Journal of Threatened Taxa 13(14): 20295–20298. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7770.13.14.20295-20298
Copyright: © Talmale
et al. 2021. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: None.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: Authors are thankful to Dr. Dhriti Benerjee,
Director, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata for providing facilities to
conduct the survey. Thanks are also due to Dr. Igor V.
Zagorodniuk, Luhansk National University, Ukarine for confirming the identity of the specimen.
Birch mice are grouped under the
monotypic genus Sicista Gray, 1827 with
14 recognized species currently distributed over the Palearctic realm (Holden
et al. 2017). The genus was earlier variably placed under the families Dipodidae of subfamily Sicistinae
(Ellerman 1961; Ellerman & Morrison-Scott 1966; Holden & Musser 2005)
and Zapodidae (Corbet & Hill 1992) but at present
it is accommodated under the family Sminthidae of
superfamily Dipodoidea (Holden et al. 2017).
The Chinese Birch Mouse Sicista concolor Buchner, 1892 is a montane species with three
fragmented populations reported so far, the nominate subspecies S. c. concolor Buchner, 1892 reported from northcentral
China, S. c. leathemi (Thomas, 1893) including
Sicista concolor
flavus (True, 1894) from India (Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh),
western China (southwestern Xinjiang), & northern Pakistan (Kaghan valley), and S. c. weigoldi
Jacobi, 1923 from southcentral China (Holden et al. 2017).
The Kashmir Birch Mouse is found
in the alpine and sub-alpine scrub zones in the Himalaya and grassy slopes of
moist montane forests at elevations of 2,140–4,000 m. It undergoes prolonged
hibernation in winter and digs its own underground burrows. It is nocturnal,
fossorial, in habit, and feeds on berries, wild fruits, seeds, fungi, and
insects. Little is known about its breeding; it is reported to produce a single
litter of 3–6 young annually (Roberts 1997).
It has a longer obscurely
bicolored tail that averages over 160% of the head-&-body length, with
short hairs throughout the length. The dorsum varies from rufous-brown and
greyish-brown to yellowish-brown with conspicuous black guard hairs on back;
there is no dark mid-dorsal stripe on the back. The fur of the body is thick
and soft; greyish-white (white with gray base) venter without clear demarcation
from the dorsum. Ears are short, rounded, thickly clothed with short chocolate
brown hairs. Hind feet are long and narrow, about 22–28% of head and body length,
lighter than the back, silvery white on upper surface, without plantar pads.
Due to overlapping characters, the subspecies flavus was synonymized
under S. c. leathami (Holden et al. 2017).
During one faunistic survey in
the grasslands of Lahaul Valley of Himachal Pradesh
between 16–29 August 2021, we had an opportunity to closely observe and
photograph (Image 1, 2) a live
small-sized mouse with distinctly longer and faintly bicolored tail in an area
between Gramphu and Chhatru
in Lahaul valley (32.373N & 77.291E; 3,220m) on
27 August 2021. The landscape was typical trans-Himalayan terrain with very dry
stony and sandy habitat interspersed with grassy clumps. The mouse was observed
foraging around grassy growths at about 1330 h with temperature and humidity at
22.8°C and 23%, respectively. Being a reportedly nocturnal species, its
apparent day time foraging is intriguing. The animal was quite docile and could
be comfortably handled and released thereafter. On the basis of the key
morphological characters mentioned in the literature (Ellerman 1961; Roberts
1997; Holden et al. 2017) the animal in the photographs (Image 1, 2) was
identified as the Kashmir Birch Mouse Sicista
concolor leathemi.
A few scattered literatures are
available on the records of rodent fauna from Himachal Pradesh (Lindsay 1926;
Chakraborty et al. 2005; Sharma et al. 2008; Sharma & Saikia
2009, 2013), however, none of them mention the occurrence of the Kashmir Birch
Mouse in Himachal Pradesh. Therefore, on the basis of photographic evidence, we
hereby report this rodent species for the first time from Himachal Pradesh. The
present locality is also recorded the southernmost point in its distribution
range.
The type locality of S. c. leathemi is Krishnye valley, Wardwan (=Warwan), in Kishtwar district of the union territory of Jammu &
Kashmir and of S. c. flavus is central Kashmir (c. 3,305 m). The leathami population is also reported from other
localities of Kashmir like Chilas, Nanga Parbat,
Astore (Gilgit-Baltistan), Rupal (Kupwara),
Malangan, Kagnarg
mountains, and Ladakh (Ellerman 1961; Chakraborty
1983; Molur et al. 2005) (Figure 1).
Ellerman & Morrison-Scott
(1966) and Ellerman (1961) listed both leathemi
and flavus as subspecies of Sicista
concolor. However, Corbet & Hill (1992),
Holden (1993), Holden & Musser (2005) synonymized both the taxa with the S.
concolor. Further, Holden et al. (2017) treated flavus
as junior synonym of S. c. leathemi. As
per the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the global status of the species
is ‘Least Concern’ due to its wide distribution and the lack of known threats (Molur 2016). However, for India S. c. leathemi is categorized as Near Threatened by Molur et al. (2005), which requires revalidation.
For figure
& images – click here
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