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A new species of Tamiops (Rodentia, Sciuridae) from Sichuan, China
Shaoying Liu1, Mingkun Tang2, Robert W Murphy3
1Sichuan Academy of Forestry, No.18, Xinghui Xilu Road, Chengdu, Sichuan 610081, China.. shaoyliu@163.com.
Abstract:
During a small mammal survey in Wanglang National Natural Reserve, Sichuan, China in AugustOctober 2018, we collected four specimens of an Asiatic striped squirrel (genus Tamiops) that could not be assigned morphologically to any described species. Phylogenetic analyses of CYTB and nuDNA sequences strongly supported them in the genus Tamiops. The p-distances of CYTB between these individuals and other species of Tamiops ranged from 17.4 to 19.1%. Morphologically, they differed from their congeners, including T. maritimus, T. mcclellandii, T. rodolphii, and T. swinhoei by pelage, skull, and baculum characteristics. Based on the results of morphological comparisons and molecular analyses, we describe the four specimens as the new species Tamiops minshanica sp. nov.
