Cuc Phuong Sun Canopy
| Cuc Phuong Sun Canopy | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Melogale cucphuongensis | ||||||||||||
| Nadler , Streicher , Stefen , Schwierz & Roos , 2011 |
The Cuc Phuong sun badger ( Melogale cucphuongensis ) is a species from the genus of the sun badger . It was only described in 2011 and is only known from its type locality , the Vietnamese national park Cúc Phương .
features
The holotype has a head-torso length of 36 cm, a skull length of 8.1 cm and a 17 cm long tail. He weighed 800 g. The animal has a dark brown fur that shimmers a bit silvery because the top hair has light tips. Only on the top of the head, between the eyes and ears, are some small white spots. A narrow white, black bordered stripe runs from the neck to the shoulders. The underside is cream-colored to light brown. The tail is relatively short, bushy and monochrome. The light-colored nasal mirror forms a small bare wedge on the top of the snout. The dark brown whiskers are numerous and very long. The mouth is clearly set back opposite the nose. The paws are small, the soles are bare. The cream-colored to light brown claws on the front paws are very long and slightly curved.
The Cuc-Phuong sun roof differs from other members of the genus primarily in its significantly narrower, slimmer and slightly upwardly curved snout, the smaller zygomatic arches and the narrower and narrower eye sockets . The tooth formula is I3 / 3, C1 / 1, P4 / 4, M1 / 2 = 38, as with all other sun axes.
habitat
The Cuc Phuong sun roof is only known from the Cúc Phương National Park in northern Vietnam. He lives there sympathetically with the Chinese sun roof ( Melogale moschata ) and the Burma sun roof ( Melogale personata ). Its habitat consists mainly of untouched or slightly impaired primary forest that grows on limestone formations.
Systematics
The first known specimen of this species was confiscated alive by rangers in Cuc-Phuong National Park, photographed and died in March 2005 without the body being preserved. In January 2006, a dead specimen with the same characteristics was found in the National Park's Endangered Primate Rescue Center and was identified as the holotype . The differences to the other generic representatives are particularly evident in the skull morphology. Based on studies of the sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome B gene, it was found that M. cucphuongensis belongs to the genus Melogale and is the sister species of a clade of Melogale moschata and Melogale personata . It separated from the ancestor of the other two species about 2.01 to 5.32 million years ago, while this one diversified into two species 700,000 to 2.31 million years ago.
literature
- Tilo Nadler, Ulrike Streicher, Clara Stefen, Elke Schwierz, Christian Roos (2011): A new species of ferret-badger, Genus Melogale, from Vietnam. The Zoological Garden, Volume 80, Issue 5, 2011, pages 271–286, DOI: 10.1016 / j.zoolgart.2011.08.004