Microtus irene (Thomas, 1911)

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 522

Microtus irene (Thomas, 1911) . Abstr. Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1911 (90):5.

TYPE LOCALITY: China, Sichuan, Tatsienlu .

DISTRIBUTION: High mtns in N Burma and the Chinese provinces of E Xizang ( Feng et al., 1986), Yunnan, Sichuan, and S Gansu (see Niethammer, 1970).

SYNONYMS: forresti , oniscus .

COMMENTS: Subgenus Neodon . Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951) listed irene as a valid species, but Corbet (1978c) allocated it to Pitymys sikimensis , citing Gruber's (1969) "detailed study" as substantiation. However, the union of irene and sikimensis is insufficiently demonstated by the data of Gruber, who even summarized the trenchant differences in body size and molar occlusal patterns that clearly distinguish the two. Furthermore, Feng et al. (1986) recorded irene from E Tibet and sikimensis from just west of that locality, without evidence of overlap in the diagnostic features of each species.