Orange-bellied Himalayan squirrel

The orange-bellied Himalayan squirrel (''Dremomys lokriah'') is a species of rodent in the family Sciuridae. It is found in Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan.

Taxonomy

The species was first described as ''Sciurus lokriah'' by Hodgson in the year 1836. He collected the specimens from the South Xizang region of Mount Everest. In 1916, Thomas and Wroughton described a species from the Manipur, India and Chin Hills as ''D. macmillani''. Later that year, Wroughton also described a subspecies of ''D. lokriah'' as ''D. l. bhotia'' from the specimens collected from sedochen of Sikkim Himalaya, and Manipur. Thomas in 1922 described two more subspecies, ''D. l. garonum'' from Garo Hills, Meghalaya and ''D. l. subflaviventris'' from Mishmi Hills, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Moore in 1956 described ''D. l. pagus'' from the specimens collected from Chin Hills, Myanmar and Lushai Hills, Mizoram, India. Cai and Zhang in 1980 described another subspecies ''D. l. motuoensis'' and Li and Wang described ''D. l. nielamuensis'' in 1992 from China.

Although subspecies of ''D. lokriah'' has gone though several revisions, presently, there are total eight known valid subspecies of the Orange-bellied Himalayan Squirrel exists throughout its distribution range. Six of them are distributed in India. All of the validations of these subspecies were however through morpho-taxonomy and multivariate analysis. Molecular studies on the validation of these subspecies are still to be performed.

References

*Thorington, R. W. Jr. and R. S. Hoffman. 2005. Family Sciuridae. pp. 754–818 ''in'' Mammal Species of the World a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. D. E. Wilson and D. M. Reeder eds. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Dremomys
Rodents of China
Mammals of Nepal
Rodents of India
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
Mammals described in 1836
Taxa named by Brian Houghton Hodgson

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