Crocidura douceti, Heim de Balsac, 1958
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publication ID |
https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.6870843 |
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DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6870438 |
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persistent identifier |
https://treatment.plazi.org/id/3D474A54-A0AE-87C2-FFFB-ACF81544FC47 |
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treatment provided by |
Felipe |
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scientific name |
Crocidura douceti |
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Doucet’s White-toothed Shrew
French: Crocidure de Doucet / German: Doucet-Weilszahnspitzmaus / Spanish: Musarana de Doucet
Other common names: Doucet’s Shrew, Doucet’'s Musk Shrew
Taxonomy. Crocidura douceti Heim de Balsac, 1958 View in CoL ,
Adiopodoume , Cote d'Ivoire (= Ivory Coast).
Crocidura douceti seems to be sister to C. muricauda and in the C. olivier: group based on genetic data, although additional sampling of more taxa is needed. Monotypic.
Distribution. Recorded from SE Guinea and SW Ivory Coast; there also are records from owl pellets from Nigeria, although
these are questionable, and a possible record from Mamang River Forest Reserve in Ghana. View Figure
Descriptive notes. Head—body 50-55 mm, tail 40-45 mm, ear 8 mm, hindfoot 10 mm; weight 4-5 g. Doucet’s White-toothed Shrew is a very small shrew. Dorsum is grayish brown to chocolate-brown, and venteris gray to off white. Limbs have pale hairs. Tail is c.80% of head-body length, dark, and thin with small hairs and longer dark bristle hairs. Skull has a short rostrum, dentition is week, and M? is large. There are three unicuspids.
Habitat. Relict and riverine forests in savannas and mixed secondary forests, swampy regions, and moist tall grass forests. Doucet’s White-toothed Shrews are often collected in agricultural areas such as cocoa and coffee plantations.
Food and Feeding. Doucet’s White-toothed Shrew eats a wide variety of invertebrates but favors arthropods. Analysis of 14 stomach samples in Tai National Park in Ivory
Coast found ants (50% frequency), beetles (29%), spiders (29%), termites (29%), and some other minor groups of arthropods. Prey sizes were 3-20 mm, with 80% less than 10 mm.
Breeding. No information.
Activity patterns. Considering its long tail, Doucet’s White-toothed Shrew might be somewhat scansorial. A nest with two juveniles was found c.10 m off the ground in a cavity of a palm tree, and one individual was captured in a glue trap in the canopy of Tai Forest.
Movements, Home range and Social organization. Doucet’s White-toothed Shrew apparently is found in very low densities, but if they are scansorial, trapping might be difficult and underestimate density.
Status and Conservation. Classified as Least Concern on The IUCN Red List. Doucet’s White-toothed Shrew has a fairly large extent of occurrence (c.105,952 km?) and is known to exist in forested and degraded areas. It might be affected by deforestation.
Bibliography. Barriere et al. (2008), Churchfield et al. (2004), Gerrie & Kennerley (20164), Happold (1987), Heim de Balsac & Aellen (1958), Heim de Balsac & Vuattoux (1969), Hutterer & Happold (1983), Jacquet et al. (2013), Nicolas et al. (2009), Vogel et al. (2013).
No known copyright restrictions apply. See Agosti, D., Egloff, W., 2009. Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:53 for further explanation.
