Apodemus wardi (Wroughton, 1908)

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 : 574

Apodemus wardi (Wroughton, 1908) . J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 18:282.

TYPE LOCALITY: N India, Kashmir, Ladakh, Saspul .

DISTRIBUTION: NC Nepal ( Martens and Niethammer, 1972) through Kashmir, N Pakistan, and Afghanistan ( Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951) to NW Iran; limits unknown.

SYNONYMS: bushengensis, pentax.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Sylvaemus . Originally described as a subspecies of sylvaticus , then listed as a subspecies of A. flavicollis by Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951), arranged as a subspecies of A. sylvaticus by Corbet (1978c), and suspected to be a different species than the latter by Gemmeke and Niethammer (1982) based on biochemical analyses of Nepalese and Iranian samples (which were documented by Darviche et al, 1979). The form bushengensis from SW Xizang (Tibet) was described as a subspecies of A. sylvaticus ( Feng et al., 1986) , and we allocate it to wardi pending a revision of the W Chinese, N Indian, and E Russian Apodemus . The relationship between this species, A. peninsulae , A. uralensis , and European A. sylvaticus requires better definition. Marshall (in press) identifies the holotype of sublimis Blanford, 1879 , from Ladakh, as an example of wardi ; if correct, sublimis may be the oldest name for this entity.