Niviventer coninga (Swinhoe 1864)

[Niviventer] coninga (Swinhoe 1864), Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1864: 185.

Type Locality: Taiwan.

Vernacular Names: Spiny Taiwan Niviventer.

Synonyms: Niviventer coxinga (Swinhoe 1871); Niviventer coxingi (Thomas 1892) .

Distribution: Endemic to Taiwan, below about 2000 m and common at 1300 m (H.- T. Yu, 1993, 1994; M.-J. Yu, 1996).

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (nt) as N. coxinga .

Discussion: Corbet and Hill (1992:364) explained why coninga instead of coxingi is the correct name for this species. Musser (1981 b) included a population from NE Burma, but that is a separate undescribed species; current morphometric analyses indicates N. coninga is not closely related to any species of Niviventer on the mainland (Musser and Lunde, ms), but analysis of mtDNA cytochrome b sequences ties N. coninga to N. tenaster within a clade also containing N. confucianus and N. culturatus (J. L. Patton, in litt., 2000). Chromosomal data documented by H.- T. Yu et al. (1996) and contrasted with karyotype of Taiwanese N. culturatus, which indicates that N. coninga and and Taiwanese N. culturatus are not sister-species but represent independent invasions of Taiwan from the Asian mainland, a pattern also supported by allozymic data (H.- T. Yu, 1995). Ecology, altitudinal distribution, and genetic population structure documented by H.- T. Yu (1993, 1994, 1995) and Adler (1995, 1996).