Mus (Mus) booduga Gray 1837

Mus (Mus) booduga Gray 1837, Mag. Nat. Hist. [Charlesworth's], 1: 586.

Type Locality: India, S Mahratta.

Vernacular Names: Little Indian Field Mouse.

Synonyms: Mus (Mus) albidiventris Blyth 1852; Mus (Mus) fulvidiventris Blyth 1852; Mus (Mus) lepidoides (Fry 1931); Mus (Mus) weragami (Deraniyagala 1965) .

Distribution: Sri Lanka, Peninsular India (north to Jammu and Kashmir; Agrawal, 2000; Chakraborty and Agrawal, 2000), Bangladesh (Posamentier, 1989), S Nepal and C Burma (Corbet and Hill, 1992), and Pakistan (Roberts, 1977, 1997; J. T. Marshall, Jr., 1998).

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: Subgenus Mus . Revised by J. T. Marshall, Jr. (1977 b). Results from chromosomal analyses reported by Sen and Sharma (1983) and Sharma et al. (1986) in context of evolutionary divergence relative to other species of Mus . Chromosomal information along with molecular data (allozymes, serum proteins, mtDNA sequences) used by Sharma (1996) in a comparative study with other species of Mus . Corbet and Hill (1992) suspected the species to be widespread but its distribution poorly known because of confusion with the morphologically similar M. terricolor . They listed terricolor Blyth, 1851 and beavanii Peters, 1866 as synonyms of M. booduga, but the former is the oldest name for M. dunni and the latter is a synonym of terricolor . Agrawal (2000) reviewed the Indian populations and treated dunni and terricolor as synonyms of M. booduga . In a morphometric study of samples from the C Punjab region of N Pakistan, Rana et al. (1998) uncovered two forms, one possibly representing M. terricolor (reported as dunni), the other M. booduga . Overlap in some features, however, prohibited a clear taxonomic decision and the authors stressed the need for breeding and cytogenetic studies of additional samples. Dental patterns of M. booduga and M. terricolor are closely similar to species of Plio-Pleistocene Mus from the Indian subcontinent (Patnaik et al., 1993). See account of M. terricolor for additional comparisons with M. booduga .