Sorex caecutiens Laxmann, 1788 —Laxmann’s Shrew

Sorex caecutiens Laxmann, 1788 p.285; Type locality-southwest shore of Lake Baikal, Russia; Ellerman & Morrison-Scott, 1951 p.48; Corbet, 1978 p.20; Han, 1994 p.45; Won & Smith, 1999 p.9; Han, 2004a p.30.

S. macropygmaeus Miller, 1901 p.158 .

S. annexus Thomas, 1906 p.859 .

S. caecutiens annexus: Van den Brink, 1953 p.108; Won, 1958 p.450; Jones & Johnson, 1960 p.559; Won, 1967 p.271.

S. caecutiens macropygmaeus: Won, 1968 p.56 .

S. caecutiens caecutiens: Yoon, 1992 p.19 .

S. caecutiens hallamontanus: Jo et al., 2012 p.249 .

Range: As the most common species of the Genus Sorex, S. caecutiens ranges throughout the Korean Peninsula and Jeju Island (Jo et al. 2012; Fig. 15). It is locally abundant in the northeastern Korean Peninsula along higher mountain ranges (Kim et al. 2015). Sorex caecutiens also inhabits the region near Seoul. Mt Odae and Mt. Jiri are known as habitats of this species in South Korea (Yoon 1992).

Remarks: The subspecific status of S. caecutiens in Korea remains ambiguous (S. c. annexus Jones and Johnson, 1960; S. c. macropygmaeus Miller, 1901). The first collection of Laxmann’s shrew on Jeju Island occurred in 1994 (Ohdachi et al. 2003; Jo et al. 2012). Ten years later, Ohdachi et al. (2005) assigned a new Subspecies Sorex caecutiens hallamontanus Abe and Oh, 2005, to the population on Jeju Island. The Jeju subspecies has morphological similarity with S. shinto, but DNA data grouped the Jeju subspecies with S. caecutiens (Ohdachi et al. 2005) . Also, populations of S. caecutiens from Korea clustered with populations on Sakhalin Island based on cytochrome b analysis (Ohdachi et al. 2003).