Madromys blanfordi (Thomas 1881)

[Mus] blanfordi Thomas 1881, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 5, 7: 24.

Type Locality: India, Madras, Kadapa.

Vernacular Names: Blanford's Madromys.

Distribution: Endemic to Sri Lanka and Peninsular India, from southern provinces north to Bihar in the east and near Bombay in the west (Agrawal, 2000).

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc) as Cremnomys blanfordi .

Discussion: Described as a species of Mus (Thomas, 1881), then allocated to Rattus (Ellerman, 1941, 1961), blanfordi is phylogenetically distant from any species in that genus and is related to species in Cremnomys, a conclusion based on dental morphology (Misonne, 1969) and chromosomal evidence (Gadi and Sharma, 1983; Raman and Sharma, 1977; Rao and Lakhotia, 1972). See discussion in Madromys above. Chromosomal number and configuration of M. blanfordi very similar to that recorded for C. cutchicus and C. elvira (Raman and Sharma, 1977), but differing in amount of C-band-positive constitutive heterochromatin (Sharma and Gadi, 1977). Ecology and occurrence in Western Ghats of S India documented by Chandrasekar-Rao and Sunquist (1996).