Ochotona (Ochotona) curzoniae Hodgson 1857

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Lagomorpha, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 1, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 185-211 : 187

Ochotona (Ochotona) curzoniae Hodgson 1857

Ochotona (Ochotona) curzoniae Hodgson 1857 , J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 1857 (26): 207.

Type Locality: "district of Chumbi", Chumbi Valley, Tibet, China.

Vernacular Names: Plateau Pika.

Synonyms: Ochotona (Ochotona) melanostoma (Büchner 1890) .

Distribution: Tibetan Plateau; adjacent Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan ( China), Sikkim ( India) and E Nepal.

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc); this species is the focus of widespread control efforts throughout its range, and has been eliminated locally (A. T. Smith et al., 1990; Smith and Foggin, 1999).

Discussion: Subgenus Ochotona . Includes melanostoma , but not seiana from Iran (contra Corbet, 1978 c: 69); see A. T. Smith et al. (1990). Treated as a subspecies of dauurica by ( Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1955 and Mitchell (1978), but it is considered a distinct species by the Chinese; see however Feng and Zheng (1985) and Feng et al. (1986). O. curzoniae and O. dauurica occur in geographic sympatry in Hainan County, Qinghai Province, China, and differ both morphologically ( Feng and Zheng, 1985; Feng et al., 1986), chromosomally ( Vorontsov and Ivanitskaya, 1973), electrophoretically ( Zhou and Xia, 1981), and in their mitochondrial DNA ( Yu et al., 1997; Yu et al., 2000). Its sister species is likely O. nubrica (Yu et al., 2000) .