Dendromus

Kostin, Danila S., Kasso, Mohammed, Komarova, Valeria A., Martynov, Alexey A., Gromov, Anton R., Alexandrov, Dmitry Y., Bekele, Afework, Zewdie, Chemere, Bryja, Josef & Lavrenchenko, Leonid A., 2019, Taxonomic and genetic diversity of rodents from the Arsi Mountains (Ethiopia), Mammalia (Warsaw, Poland) 83 (3), pp. 237-247 : 244

Genus Dendromus

Until recently, Nikolaus’s African climbing mouse Dendromus nikolausi (Dieterlen and Rupp, 1978) was considered to be a representative of the distinct monotypic genus Megadendromus due to its larger size, relatively short tail and unique dental characters. However, molecular phylogenetic analysis of a single individual captured in the BM shows that this species is an internal lineage of the genus Dendromus ( Lavrenchenko et al. 2017) . During our field surveys, one additional individual of D. nikolausi was trapped on the western slope of the Galama ridge (site 7). This represents the sixth individual of this rare and poorly known species captured in almost 40 years since its first description. Molecular analysis of its CYTB sequence revealed a 2.39 ± 0.005% p -distance between our individual and that captured in the BM.

A further Dendromus species was recorded in both the Shirka region (site 1) and on Mount Chilalo (sites 4 and

8), preliminary analysis suggesting that it is probably a new undescribed Dendromus species, differing genetically from other taxa ( Lavrenchenko et al. 2017). It is worth mentioning that this species has also been caught at high altitudes (> 3200 m a.s.l.) on the northwestern plateau near Debre Sina ( Lavrenchenko et al. 2017). A genetic analysis has shown considerable genetic distance between Debre Sina and the AM specimens (5.19 ± 0.007%). The species has also recently been collected at similar altitudes in the BM (Bryja et al. unpubl. data).