Calomyscus bailwardi Thomas 1905

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Calomyscidae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 926-930 : 927

Calomyscus bailwardi Thomas 1905

Calomyscus bailwardi Thomas 1905 , Abstr. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1905 (24): 23.

Type Locality: WC Iran, E Khuzistan Prov., Zagros Mtns, 120 km SE Ahwaz (= Ahaz), Mala-i-Mir (= Izeh).

Vernacular Names: Zagros Mountains Calomyscus.

Distribution: Zagros Mtns of W Iran in the provinces of Kordistan, Ilam, W Esfahan, E Khuzistan, Luristan, Fars, and W Kerman (Vorontsov et al., 1979, and our study of specimens in AMNH, FMNH, and USNM); actual range has yet to be defined.

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: True C. bailwardi has been recorded only from the Zagros Mtns in W Iran; the range as usually described in the literature ( Corbet, 1978 c) represents other species as well. It is medium in body size ( C. urartensis , C. mystax , C. elburzensis , C. hotsoni , and C. tsolovi smaller-bodied; C. grandis larger-bodied) and may be most closely allied to the medium-sized C. baluchi ; nature of the phylogenetic affinites between C. bailwardi and all other named forms has yet to be resolved by careful morphometric, chromosomal, and molecular analyses. Graphodatsky et al. (2000) reported a karyotypic variability for samples from the northern Zagros Mtns in Bahtaran Prov. (2n = 37, FN = 44), southern Zagros Mtns in Fars Prov. (2n = FN = 50), and mountains of southern Kerman Prov. (2n = 52, FN = 56), just east of the southern Zagros Mtns. They could not attach a species name to any sample. Whether one or all of the karyotypes represent C. bailwardi or three separate species cannot be determined until the geographic ranges of the karyotypes are determined and, as Graphodatsky et al. (2000) noted, animals from the type locality of C. bailwardi are karyotyped. Mitochondrial cytochrome b divergences documented among samples identified as C. bailwardi from Hormozgan and Kerman Provs., S Iran ( Morshed and Patton, 2002).