Bandicota savilei Thomas, 1916

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 : 579

Bandicota savilei Thomas, 1916 . J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 24:641.

TYPE LOCALITY: Burma, Mt Popa, about 2500 ft .

DISTRIBUTION: Recorded from E Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam; probably also occurs in S Laos and Cambodia.

SYNONYMS: bangchakensis, curtata , giaraiensis, hichensis.

COMMENTS: Occurs sympatrically with B. indica in C and S Thailand and S Vietnam; found with B. bengalensis in Burma where B. savilei lives in fields and B. bengalensis in village houses. Bandicota savilei is a very distinctive species as Thomas (191 6d) pointed out when he described it; unfortunately it was later incorrectly treated as a subspecies of B. indica ( Ellerman, 1961; Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951). Specimens are usually misidentified as B. bengalensis , but in external, cranial, and dental morphology, B. savilei is linked to B. indica . Electrophoretic data, however, indicated a closer relationship with B. bengalensis than with B. indica ( Radtke and Niethammer, 1984 /85). Chromosomal information reported by Markvong et al. (1973). Lekagul and Felten (1989) described bangchakensis as a species; hichensis and giaraiensis were proposed as subspecies of B. bengalensis ( Dao, 1961; Dao and Cao, 1990).