A new subspecies of Finlayson’s squirrel from an isolated island offshore of the Indochina Peninsula in southern Vietnam
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Duong Thuy Vu
, Son Truong Nguyen, Masaharu Motokawa
, Tu Ngoc Ly , Phuong Huy Dang , Hai Tuan Bui , Minh Duc Le , Hideki Endo and Tatsuo Oshida
Abstract
We describe a new subspecies of Finlayson’s squirrel (Callosciurus finlaysonii) from Hon Nghe Island in the Gulf of Thailand. This island is located off the coast of southern Vietnam. In addition, we discussed the phylogenetic relationships among C. finlaysonii subspecies distributed on the isolated islands in the Gulf of Thailand. The new subspecies (C. finlaysonii honnghensis), which is endemic to Hon Nghe Island, differs from other C. finlaysonii subspecies in pelage colouration. The mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences showed that this squirrel is closely related to C. finlaysonii albivexilli and C. finlaysonii frandseni, which are endemic to the Koh Kut and Koh Chang islands, respectively, suggesting that the three subspecies diverged approximately 30,000 years ago. After the last glacial maximum, many small islands were formed by the sea level rise in the Gulf of Thailand, which was a consequence of global warming. Following the continuous fragmentation of the Sunda Continent, each C. finlaysonii subspecies could have evolved in each geographically isolated island in this gulf. Thus, studying C. finlaysonii subspecies may be used to track the recent geological history of the Gulf of Thailand.
Funding source: Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture, Japan
Award Identifier / Grant number: 18H03602
Award Identifier / Grant number: 19H00534
Award Identifier / Grant number: 20H01979
Funding source: The Program of Developing Basic Sciences in Chemistry, Life Sciences, Earth Sciences and Marine Sciences, Vietnam
Award Identifier / Grant number: KHCBSS.02/20–22
Funding source: University of Science, Vietnam National University, Hanoi
Funding source: Cooperation Research Program of the Wildlife Research Centre, Kyoto University
Funding source: Idea Wild Grant
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Lam Quang Ngon at Can Tho University and Cao Truong Sang at Hon Nghe Junior High School for providing the information on Hon Nghe squirrel and Tran Anh Tuan for designing the map. We thank Nguyen Van Sinh (the director of Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources – IEBR) for supporting the expedition and Nguyen The Cuong for providing the information on the flora of Hon Nghe Island. We thank Vu Dinh Thong at IEBR and Nguyen Thanh Nam and Hoang Trung Thanh at VNU University of Science for their support with museum reference specimens. We thank Mitsuhiro Iwasa for his thoughtful comments for our study. We greatly thank two anonymous reviewers and John Koprowski (Dean, University of Wyoming) for thoughtful comments on our manuscript.
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Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.
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Research funding: This research was funded by The Program of Developing Basic Sciences in Chemistry, Life Sciences, Earth Sciences and Marine Sciences, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (KHCBSS.02/20–22), as well as partially supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research nos. 18H03602, 19H00534 and 20H01979 from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture, Japan and Idea Wild Grant. This study was partly funded by the Cooperation Research Program of the Wildlife Research Centre, Kyoto University.
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Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest regarding this article.
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Research ethics: In handling of squirrels, we followed the methods approved in the Animal Care and Use Guidelines of the American Society of Mammalogists (Sikes et al. 2016). In the open air, we euthanized squirrels using ether. We obtained permission to land on Hon Nghe Island and collect animals from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), Hanoi, Vietnam (permission number: QTJP01.02/18-20; KC09.11/16-20; No 2027/QD-VHL/2019/-KHCBSS.02/20-22; No731/QD-STTNSV/2019; No730/STTNSV/2020).
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2021-0015).
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ecology
- Diet and activity pattern of leopard in relation to prey in tropical forest ecosystem
- Potential predators of Dolichotis patagonum in the surroundings of its burrows, in Sierra de las Quijadas National Park, San Luis, Argentina
- A pilot study on the home range and movement patterns of the Andean Fox Lycalopex culpaeus (Molina, 1782) in Cotopaxi National Park, Ecuador
- Bat species of a karstic region in the Brazilian savanna and extension of the Hsunycteris thomasi (Phyllostomidae: Lonchophyllinae) distribution
- Habitat selection of invasive alien Pallas’s squirrels (Callosciurus erythraeus) in an urban habitat with small fragmented green spaces
- Relative use of xeric boreal habitats by shrews (Sorex spp.)
- Ethology
- Behavioral response of wild mammals to pre-existing and artificial latrines of raccoon dogs in northeastern Japan
- Biogeography
- The distribution of American mink (Neovison vison) in Greece
- Taxonomy/Phylogeny
- A new subspecies of Finlayson’s squirrel from an isolated island offshore of the Indochina Peninsula in southern Vietnam
- Desmodilliscus braueri crania compared to Pachyuromys duprasi (Desmodilliscini, Gerbillinae, Rodentia)
- Morphological variation in bony structures of Hylaeamys seuanezi (Rodentia, Cricetidae, Sigmodontinae) in Southern Bahia, Brazil
- Annual Reviewer Acknowledgement
- Reviewer acknowledgement Mammalia volume 85 (2021)