MDD/Hesperomys comparison: Hyracoidea through Pilosa

[JelleZijlstra]

Continuing #22, #23, #26, #27, #28 with a number of small orders. There are a number of spelling issues, and some taxonomic disagreements in the lagomorphs.

Hyracoidea

Straightforward accepted changes:

• New splits
  • Dendrohyrax validus < D. arboreus (minor: MDD has a typo in the comment, "form" for "from", and is missing page numbers for the Mammals of Africa reference, should be 158–161)

Relatedly, I noticed that there is a subspecies Dendrohyrax arboreus mimus recognized by Mammals of Africa; MDD also lists mimus as a synonym for arboreus. However, the original name was Procavia mima, and I believe it is a noun in apposition because there is no Latin adjective mimus. Therefore, the correct combination is Dendrohyrax arboreus mima.

Lagomorpha

Straightforward accepted changes:

• New splits
  • Lepus altamirae < L. californicus
  • Pronolagus saundersiae < P. rupestris
  • Sylvilagus holzneri < S. floridanus
  • Ochotona argentata < O. pallasii
  • Ochotona vizier < O. rufescens
  • Ochotona qionglaiensis < O. thibetana
  • Ochotona turuchanensis < O. alpina
• New mergers
  • Sylvilagus cognatus, S. robustus -> S. holzneri
  • Ochotona gloveri -> O. erythrotis
  • Ochotona morosa -> O. cansus
  • Ochotona fengii -> O. thibetana
• Other taxonomic changes
  • Brachylagus idahoensis -> Sylvilagus idahoensis
• Spelling changes
  • Ochotona roylei -> O. roylii
• Recently extinct species
  • Prolagus sardus

Leporidae

Lepus microtis vs. L. victoriae (-)

I use Lepus microtis (agreeing with MSW 3), MDD uses Lepus victoriae (agreeing with HMW and Mammals of Africa).

MDD acknowledges that microtis is older but retains victoriae because it was used in previous publications and because microtis is a nomen nudum. I looked at the original description of microtis and it is definitely not a nomen nudum; Heuglin gives a thorough description that runs for about a page. The holotype is still in existence in Stuttgart. I don't find the argument that victoriae is in common usage particularly convincing either, since MSW3 used microtis and the species has previously been known under various other names.

Ochotonidae

Ochotona dabashanensis and O. xunhuaensis (-!)

I have these two as valid species, MDD synonymizes them under Ochotona sikimaria.

MDD cites Wang et al. (2020), but their tree places Ochotona sikimaria distant (within subgenus Ochotona) from dabashanensis and xunhuaensis (within subgenus Alienauroa, sister to O. sacraria). Therefore, I don't think synonymy with sikimaria is supported by the sources. However, a case could be made for synonymizing xunhuaensis and dabashanensis, as they are not reciprocally monophyletic; xunhuaensis would have priority.

Prolagidae

MDD puts Prolagus in its own family Prolagidae; I place it within Ochotonidae.

There is little hard evidence here (nobody seems to have gotten aDNA for Prolagus yet, for one), but the western European paleontological literature mostly keeps Prolagus within Ochotonidae. The most explicit discussion is in Angelone et al. (2014). However, Russian authors tend to follow Erbajeva and recognize the family Prolagidae. Prolagus apparently has a long independent history, going back into the Oligocene.

This is entirely a subjective question; I chose to put Prolagus within Ochotonidae because that's what almost all recent papers discussing it do. (Prolagus is a fairly common fossil in the Miocene and Pliocene of Europe.)

Ref: Angelone, C., Prieto, J. and Gross, M. 2014. Complement to the study of the pikas (Lagomorpha, Ochotonidae) from the Middle Miocene of Gratkorn, Austria. Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments 94(1):125-134. doi:10.1007/s12549-013-0146-4

Microbiotheria

I accept the reclassification of Dromiciops into two species.

(Nothing to discuss in Macroscelidea, Monotremata, Notoryctemorphia, and Paucituberculata.)

Peramelemorphia

Straightforward accepted changes

• Recently extinct species
  • Chaeropus ecaudatus
  • Chaeropus yirratji
  • Macrotis leucura
• New splits
  • Isoodon peninsulae and I. auratus < I. obesulus
• New mergers
  • Microperoryctes ornata -> M. longicauda (though I'd cite HMW instead of the Red List)

Peramelidae

Microperoryctes/Peroryctes spelling (-/+)

There are a few discrepancies around gender agreement in Microperoryctes and Peroryctes:

• Hesp Microperoryctes longicaudus vs. MDD longicauda
• Hesp Microperoryctes murinus vs. MDD murina
• Hesp Peroryctes raffrayanus vs. MDD raffrayana

The generic names come from Greek ὀρύκτης oryktes "digger", which is masculine. Other similar names in extant mammals, like Notoryctes, Tachyoryctes, and Oryzorictes are consistently treated as masculine. Indeed, when Thomas named Peroryctes, he listed the type species as "P. raffrayanus". However, when Stein named Microperoryctes he used the feminine murina.

I think longicauda is reasonably interpreted as a noun in apposition, so I'm going to change back to MDD's term. However, the other two are clearly adjectives and I believe the masculine form is correct.

AI: Confirm and publish

Perissodactyla

Straightforward accepted changes

• New mergers
  • Equus burchellii -> E. quagga
  • Equus onager -> E. hemionus
  • Ceratotherium cottoni -> C. simum

Pholidota

Manidae

Phataginus tetradactylus vs. tetradactyla (-)

MDD has tetradactyla, I have tetradactylus.

Phataginus is a masculine name, tetradactyla is an adjective, so the name should agree in gender with the genus. (Compare Cyclopes didactylus, which was originally Myrmecophaga didactyla.)

AI: Confirm and publish

Pilosa

Straightforward accepted changes

• New splits
  • Bradypus crinitus < B. torquatus

[connorjburgin]

Comment on subspecies/synonyms: pretty much all spelling differences at the synonym level will be ‘corrected’ to your list in the end because I hand typed them all and there are A TON of errors, so spelling wise, it’s fine to just leave the synonyms as they are for now and we’ll deal with it when we get there.

Lepus microtis vs. L. victoriae (-) – I’ll go ahead and use microtis, as the only reason I used victoriae was as a relict from starting with the HMW taxonomy. I didn’t really agree with using victoriae in the first place but never really had the push to change it.

Ochotona dabashanensis and O. xunhuaensis (-!) – So, I screwed the comments on this one up a bit on the MDD, they should both be considered synonyms of O. syrinx, not O. sikimaria (the correct comment should be this under O. syrinx: ‘has included O. sacraria and has been included under huangensis (now a synonym of dauurica); includes dabashanensis and xunhuaensis’, and not under O. sikimaria. I fixed that after sending you my matched list. Lissovsky, 2014 synonymized huangensis under dauurica and applied the name syrinx to the taxon formerly known as huangensis, also synonymizing xunhuaensis under the newly established O. syrinx. Liu et al., 2017 described dabashanensis, which was found to be paraphyletic with specimens labeled as xunhuaensis (= O. syrinx, which they do briefly acknowledge in their paper) by Wang et al., 2020, thus supporting the inclusion of dabashanensis under O. syrinx. I would strongly suggest using this arrangement, although I am up for discussion since Wang et al., 2020 did not strictly state that they were synonymizing dabashanensis under xunhuaensis (= O. syrinx). I also talked about it with Lissovsky out of pure confusion when working on the taxonomy of Ochotona for the Illustrated Checklist, and that is the arrangement he recommended.
Lissovsky, A.A. 2014. Taxonomic revision of pikas Ochotona (Lagomorpha, Mammalia) at the species level. Mammalia 78(2): 199–216.
Liu, S. Y., Jin, W., Liao, R., Sun, Z. Y., Zeng, T., Fu, J. R., ... & Chen, L. M. (2017). Phylogenetic study of Ochotona based on mitochondrial Cyt b and morphology with a description of one new subgenus and five new species. Acta Theriologica Sinica, 37(1), 1-43.
Wang, X., Liang, D., Jin, W., Tang, M., Liu, S., & Zhang, P. (2020). Out of Tibet: Genomic Perspectives on the Evolutionary History of Extant Pikas. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 37(6), 1577-1592.

Prolagidae – I will move Prolagus to Ochotonidae based on your recommendation: Angelone, C., Prieto, J. and Gross, M. 2014. Complement to the study of the pikas (Lagomorpha, Ochotonidae) from the Middle Miocene of Gratkorn, Austria. Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments 94(1):125-134. doi:10.1007/s12549-013-0146-4

Hesp Microperoryctes longicaudus vs. MDD longicauda – retaining MDD (as you are)
Hesp Microperoryctes murinus vs. MDD murina – changing to Hesperomys on MDD.
Hesp Peroryctes raffrayanus vs. MDD raffrayana – changing to Hesperomys on MDD.

Phataginus tetradactylus vs. tetradactyla (-) – will change to match Hesperomys.

[JelleZijlstra]

Thanks for the explanation around Ochotona, it's indeed quite confusing. I'll synonymize both of these species under syrinx as you suggest.