Mus, Linnaeus, 1758

Kostin, Danila S., Kasso, Mohammed, Komarova, Valeria A., Martynov, Alexey A., Gromov, Anton R., Alexandrov, Dmitry Y., Bekele, Afework, Zewdie, Chemere, Bryja, Josef & Lavrenchenko, Leonid A., 2019, Taxonomic and genetic diversity of rodents from the Arsi Mountains (Ethiopia), Mammalia (Warsaw, Poland) 83 (3), pp. 237-247 : 243

Genus Mus

The phylogenetic position of Mus imberbis (until recently Muriculus imberbis ; Meheretu et al. 2015) has long been unclear. Based on external features, such as the mid-dorsal black stripe, and morphological peculiarities of the skull, this species was previously placed in the separate Muriculus genus ( Thomas, 1903); however, a recent study ( Meheretu et al. 2015) using molecular data has shown that the species represents an ancient lineage of the African subgenus Nannomys within the genus Mus . During our survey, one individual of this extremely rare species was trapped in Erica bush on the western slopes of Mount Chilalo (site 4). Comparison with M. imberbis from the Shirka region ( Meheretu et al. 2015) revealed an almost identical mitochondrial haplotype (p -distance = 0.09). As these two specimens were captured in the northernmost and southernmost parts of the AM, one can assume that local populations of this species have low genetic diversity.

Another representative of the genus Mus , M. mahomet Rhoads, 1896 , was trapped in the Shirka region (site 1) and on the western slope of Mount Chilalo at sites 3 and 4. Genetic analysis of the complete CYTB sequence revealed similar haplotypes in both AM and BM populations (Table 2).

The final Mus species, thought to inhabit montane forests in the AM, is undescribed yet M. sp. “Harenna” (sensu Bryja et al. 2014). Until now, this species has only been reported from the Harenna Forest on the southern slopes of the BM ( Yalden 1988, Lavrenchenko 2000, Bryja et al. 2014). As we failed to collect this species in any habitat in the AM (including montane forest), despite intensive trapping efforts, it is likely that the species only lives in the BM Harenna Forest.