Crocidura nana Dobson, 1890

Rainer Hutterer, 1993, Order Insectivora, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 69-130 : 90

Crocidura nana Dobson, 1890 . Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 6, 5:225.

TYPE LOCALITY: Somalia, Dolio .

DISTRIBUTION: Somalia, Ethiopia.

COMMENTS: The name nana has been applied to various small shrews of Somalia, Ethiopia, and Egypt, leading to the proposal ( Setzer, 1957) that nana is conspecific with religiosa (which it does not antedate); a conclusion followed by Heim de Balsac and Mein (1971) and Osborn and Helmy (1980). Personal examination of the holotype of nana revealed that it represents a juvenile (skull inside the skin) of a species larger that religiosa ; this conclusion was supported by better preserved topotypical specimens from Somalia in the British Museum (Natural History), which were also compared with the neotype of religiosa ( Corbet, 1978c:27) . The proposed conspecificy is therefore not accepted, and religiosa remains an endemic of the Nile valley in Egypt. The relation of nana with other small species has yet to be studied.