Crocidura parva Esselstyn &amp; Achmadi &amp; Handika &amp; Swanson &amp; Giarla &amp; Rowe 2021, new species
Creators: name: Esselstyn, Jacob A.
name: Achmadi, Anang S.
name: Handika, Heru
name: Swanson, Mark T.
name: Giarla, Thomas C.
name: Rowe, Kevin C.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Mammalia
Soricomorpha
Soricidae
Crocidura
Crocidura parva

description: <i>Crocidura parva</i>, new species LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank. org:act: 8C7D230C-7F04-4FE0-9896- 5921A8574315 HOLOTYPE: MZB 43008 (= MVZ 237577), an adult female collected on 18 October 2016 by H. Handika. The specimen is preserved as a study skin, cleaned skull (fig. 31C) and skeleton, and frozen tissues. External measurements recorded in the field from the type are: 101 mm × 41 mm × 2 mm × 7 mm = 3.9 g. Hind-foot length for the holotype was erroneously recorded as 2 mm; the true value is almost certainly 12 mm. The voucher specimen and a tissue sample will be permanently curated at MZB, while an additional tissue sample will be retained at MVZ. TYPE LOCALITY: Indonesia, Sulawesi Selatan, Sinjai, Sinjai Barat, Gunung Perak Village, Mt. Bawakaraeng; 5.286815° S, 119.961406° E, 1713– 1754 m elevation. ETYMOLOGY: <i>Parva</i> is Latin (feminine) for “tiny,” used in recognition of the diminutive body size of this species. GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: This animal was extremely abundant on Mt. Bawakaraeng of the south-west area of endemism (South Sulawesi Province; fig. 25). We did not encounter it anywhere else and it may be endemic to this region. All specimens were collected between 1700 and 2500 m elevation (table 3). Habitat destruction has eliminated low- and middle-elevation forests in South Sulawesi, which may have altered the natural elevational distribution of this species. DIAGNOSIS: <i>Crocidura parva</i> is among the smallest shrews on Sulawesi and it has the narrowest average braincase breadth of any species on the island (tables 2, 8). For a shrew of its head-and-body length, it has a rather delicate build (fig. 17). <i>Crocidura parva</i> has a gray-brown to dark brown pelage, with a slightly grayer venter. The fur is not particularly dense, and individual hairs on the middorsum are only about 3 mm in length, despite all specimens coming from mid to high elevation. Overall, the color of the skin on the feet, ears, lips, and tail match that of the surrounding pelage. The mystacial vibrissae are short (most &lt;10 mm) and pigmented proximally for no more than half of their length. The tail length is short absolutely, and less than head-and-body length (fig. 9; table 2). Tail bristles are relatively abundant and are present along about two-thirds of the proximal tail length (fig. 29C). The skull is short, but also quite narrow at the braincase, giving it an elongate and dorsoventrally compressed overall appearance. The lambdoidal ridge is indistinct. The width of the interorbital region is middling relative to skull length (fig. 10) and the maxillary process is not prominent. Rostral length forms a relatively small proportion of skull length (fig. 10). The molar row is crowded on the narrow palate (fig. 31C). On the upper cheek teeth, the metacone is unusually prominent relative to the protocone, particularly on P4. COMPARISONS: <i>Crocidura parva</i> is much smaller than all known Sulawesi shrews except other members of the Small-Bodied Group. Externally, <i>C. parva</i> is rather uniform in color, as are <i>C. levicula</i>, <i>C. baletei</i>, and <i>C. tenebrosa</i>, but other species have paler feet than bodies, including <i>C. lea</i> and to a lesser extent, <i>C. mediocris</i>. The overall color of <i>C. parva</i> is slightly darker than <i>C. mediocris</i>, and considerably darker than <i>C. lea</i>. The tail has more bristles than in <i>C. mediocris</i>, but fewer than <i>C. levicula</i> (fig. 29). The pelage is shorter than in other species, except that <i>C. mediocris</i> is similar. The skull of the tiny <i>C. parva</i> is slightly smaller overall than seen in any of the other very small taxa (table 8) and relative rostral length (RL /CIL) is less than in <i>C. mediocris</i>, <i>C. baletei</i>, and <i>C. tenebrosa</i> (fig. 10). Most distinctively, the braincases of the other species are more dorsoventrally inflated, particularly in the case of <i>C. lea</i>. The flat braincase of <i>C. parva</i> is narrower than in all other Small-Bodied species, but the range of values overlaps with those from <i>C. lea, C. levicula</i>, and <i>C. mediocris</i> (fig. 26). Bivariate plots of cranial length versus width and the first two axes from a PCA of 12 cranial dimensions show <i>C. parva</i> to occupy largely distinct morphometric space, but to overlap some with <i>C. lea</i>, <i>C. levicula</i>, and <i>C. mediocris</i> (fig. 26). Finally, in <i>C. parva</i>, on the upper molariform teeth, the protocone is relatively low, compared with those of the other Small-Bodied shrews (figs. 28, 31). COMMENTS: We found this species only on Mt. Bawakaraeng, but our nearest sample sites are on Mt. Latimojong (fig. 25), some 215 km away. Much of the intervening habitat between Mts. Bawakaraeng and Latimojong is low elevation and dry, with the lowest area (the Tempe Depression) considered a barrier to many vertebrate taxa. Nevertheless, sampling additional sites in the south-west area of endemism may extend the known range of <i>Crocidura parva</i>. We interpret this probable isolation as additional support for distinguishing <i>C. parva</i> from <i>C. mediocris</i>, which is phenotypically similar. These two species are sister taxa in our mitogenome phylogeny (fig. 5), but each is paraphyletic with respect to the other in our UCE (figs. 7, 8) and nuclear exon phylogenies (supplementary data S6). Because of the slow evolutionary rate of UCEs and exons, we do not consider this to be strong evidence against their distinction. We tested species limits in BPP between <i>Crocidura parva</i> and <i>C. mediocris</i> and among <i>C. parva</i>, <i>C. mediocris</i>, and <i>C. normalis</i>. The former analysis employed 20 individuals of each species and the matrix is 95% complete. The second analysis used the same dataset, but with the addition of 36 specimens of <i>C. normalis</i>. This matrix is 94% complete. All analyses supported each species with a posterior probability of 1. SPECIMENS EXAMINED: Mt. Bawakaraeng (MVZ 237575, 237576, 237578–237581, 237583, 237584, 237600–237609; MZB 43008; NMV Z57156, Z56280, Z56302, Z56314, Z56319, Z56995, Z57008, Z57012, Z57045, Z57046, Z57047, Z57057, Z57064, Z57103, Z57129, Z57208).
description: Published as part of <i>Esselstyn, Jacob A., Achmadi, Anang S., Handika, Heru, Swanson, Mark T., Giarla, Thomas C. &amp; Rowe, Kevin C., 2021, Fourteen New, Endemic Species Of Shrew (Genus Crocidura) From Sulawesi Reveal A Spectacular Island Radiation, pp. 1-109 in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2021 (454)</i> on pages 66-67, DOI: 10.1206/0003-0090.454.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/5788835