Sorex thibetanus Kastschenko, 1905

Rainer Hutterer, 1993, Order Insectivora, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 69-130 : 121

Sorex thibetanus Kastschenko, 1905 . Izv. Tomsk. Univ., 27:93.

TYPE LOCALITY: "Tsaidam" [NE Tibet] .

DISTRIBUTION: Himalyas and NE Tibet.

COMMENTS: The pygmy shrews of the Himalayas are the subject of controversy. The original description of thibetanus (as a subspecies of minutus ) is not very helpful and the holotype in the Tomsk Academy was considered to be lost (Yudin, pers. comm. 1977 to the author); Hutterer (1979) therefore regarded thibetanus as a nomen dubium. Dolgov and Hoffmann (1977) and later Hoffmann (1987) used thibetanus to define a Himalayan species in which they included buchariensis , kozlovi , planiceps , and specimens from Nepal and China reported as minutus by various authors. Hutterer (1979) instead recognized three species, buchariensis , planiceps , and minutus as occurring in the Himalayas and regarded kozlovi and thibetanus as indeterminable. Zaitsev (1988) pointed out differences between buchariensis and thibetanus . Surprisingly, the holotype of thibetanus turned up in the Zoological Museum of Moscow ( Baranova et al., 1981) and Hoffmann (1987) reported on its measurements. These did not solve the problem but instead matched well with minutus . The controversy still remains unresolved and can be solved presumably only with new material and a more complete data set. Provisionally all the mentioned forms are listed separately.