The Kinabalu shrew (''Crocidura baluensis'') is a species in the family Soricidae. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found els ...

to the mountain

Mount Kinabalu Mount Kinabalu ( ms, Gunung Kinabalu, Dusun: ''Gayo Ngaran or Nulu Nabalu'') is the highest mountain in Borneo and Malaysia. With an elevation of , it is third-highest peak of an island on Earth, and 20th most prominent mountain in the worl ...

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java Isl ...

, and its sister peak, Mount Tambuyukon.Camacho-Sanchez M, Hawkins MTR*, Tuh Yit Yuh F, Maldonado JE, Leonard JA. 2019. Endemism and diversity of small mammals along two neighboring Bornean mountains. PeerJ 7:e7858 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7858 Despite its resemblance in external morphology with the mountain shrew ''C. lepidura'' (Sumatra), multilocus phylogenies reveal a recent divergence of ''C. baluensis'' from the Sabahan lineage of the

Bornean shrew The Bornean shrew (''Crocidura foetida'') is a species of mammal in the family Soricidae. It is found only on Borneo, throughout most of the island; it may or may not be present in Brunei. Multilocus phylogenies reveal paraphyly in ''C. foetida ...

, ''C. foetida sensu lato''. The latter inhabits the lower slopes in Kinabalu, up to around 1500 masl, where it is replaced by ''C. baluensis''. The larger size and longer hair of ''C. baluensis'' respect to the lowland ''C. foetida sensu lato'' seems related to adaptation to the colder mountain conditions. Future sampling at mid-elevations in Kinabalu will be required to address whether this closely-related lowland lineage represents a distinct species or if ''Crocidura baluensis'' should be redefined to include these lowland Sabahan populationsArlo Hinckley, Miguel Camacho-Sanchez, Manuel Ruedi, Melissa T R Hawkins, Madeleine Mullon, Anna Cornellas, Fred Tuh Yit Yuh, Jennifer A Leonard, Evolutionary history of Sundaland shrews (Eulipotyphla: Soricidae: Crocidura) with a focus on Borneo, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlab045

References

Crocidura Mammals described in 1898 Taxa named by Oldfield Thomas Endemic fauna of Borneo Endemic fauna of Malaysia Mammals of Borneo {{Whitetoothed-shrew-stub