Order Lagomorpha
Author
Robert S. Hoffmann
text
1993
Smithsonian Institution Press
Washington and London
Editor
Don E. Wilson
Editor
DeeAnn M. Reeder
Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition)
807
827
book chapter
http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7353088
1-56098-217-9
7353088
Ochotona cansus
Lyon, 1907
.
Smithson. Mise. Coll., 50:136
.
TYPE LOCALITY:
"Taocheo,
Kan-su
,
China
" [Lintan, Gannan A.D.,
Gansu
,
China
]
.
DISTRIBUTION: C
China
(
Gansu
,
Qinghai
,
Sichuan
); isolated populations in
Shaanxi
and
Shanxi
.
STATUS: The
Shanxi
subspecies
sorella
,
isolated in the extreme northwest of the species range, may be extinct. It is known from only a few specimens, and has not been found in over 50 years.
SYNONYMS:
morosa
Thomas, 1912;
sorella
Thomas, 1908
;
stevensi
Osgood, 1932
.
COMMENTS:
Büchner (1890)
originally included this species in the quite different
O.
roylei
,
but in recent years it has usually been assigned to
O. thibetana
(
Allen, 1938
;
Argyropulo, 1948
;
Corbet, 1978c
;
Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951
;
Gureev, 1964
;
Honacki et al., 1982
;
Weston, 1982
). Recent studies showed that
cansus
and
thibetana
are broadly sympatric, with distinct ecological niches, and morphological characters that do not intergrade (
Feng and Kao, 1974
;
Feng and Zheng, 1985
). The latter authors, without access to
holotypes
, assigned the
race
morosa
to
thibetana
,
but it is an isolated subspecies of
cansus
that is sympatric with
O. thibetana
in the Tsing Ling
Shan
,
Shaanxi Province
(A. T. Smith et al., 1990, and references therein).