Blarinella wardi, (Thomas 1915) (Thomas, 1915)

Chen, Shunde, Liu, Shaoying, Liu, Yang, He, Kai, Chen, Weicai, Zhang, Xiuyue, Fan, Zhenxin, Tu, Feiyun, Jia, Xiaodong & Yue, Bisong, 2012, Molecular phylogeny of Asiatic Short-Tailed Shrews, genus Blarinella Thomas, 1911 (Mammalia: Soricomorpha: Soricidae) and its taxonomic implications, Zootaxa 3250 (1), pp. 43-53 : 50

Validity of B. wardi .

Thomas (1915) established the validity of B. wardi , but the species was considered as a synonym of B. quadraticauda at the specific level or ranked as a subspecies of B. quadraticauda by most taxonomists ( Allen 1938; Ellerman & Morrison-Scott 1951; Corbet 1978; Honacki et al. 1982; Corbet & Hill 1992). Hoffmann (1987) and Jiang et al. (2003) revealed that B. wardi had a much smaller and narrower skull than B. griselda or B. quadraticauda and regarded them as a valid species ( Hutterer 2005). Furthermore, karyotype analyses revealed the diploid number (2N) of B. wardi (2N=32; Moribe et al. 2007) to be different from that of B. griselda (2N=44; Ye et al. 2006).

In the present study, the phylogenetic trees strongly supported the monophyly of B. wardi and the sister group relationship to the B. griselda + B. quadraticauda complex. In addition, average genetic distances of cyt -b between members of B. wardi and the other two species ( B. griselda and B. quadraticauda ) were over 14.0%, which is considered as a typical range of interspecific distance for cyt -b in insectivores and other mammals ( Fumagalli et al. 1999; Bradley & Baker 2001; Avise 1994). Although B. wardi was only represented by three specimens from one locality in this study, we expect that more extensive sampling will not change the phylogenic relationships or genetic distance (He et al. unpublished data). In summary, our results support the validity of B. wardi based on the genetic and phylogenetic species concepts ( Baker & Bradley 2006; Nixon & Wheeler 1990).