Reconsideration of the actual type locality of the lesser Japanese shrew-mole, Dymecodon pilirostris

Abstract

In the original description of the lesser Japanese shrew-mole, Dymecodon pilirostris, by True (1886), its type locality is described as “Yenosima, at the mouth of the Bay of Yeddo, Japan.” Yenoshima is the current Enoshima, a small island located not in Tokyo Bay (the Bay of Yeddo) but in the mouth of Sagami Bay facing the Pacific Ocean, Kanagawa Prefecture, in eastern Honshu, Japan. The type locality has been considered to be doubtful because Enoshima is not included in D. pilirostris' distribution, which mainly consists of rocky terrain in mountainous areas. In this paper, we tried to elucidate the cause of the error of the type locality and the actual type locality based on travels of Edward S. Morse who brought the type specimen to the United States. On the basis of his activities during his first stay in Japan before the relegation of the specimen from the Boston Museum of Natural History to the National Museum of Natural History in 1878, we can see that, on most days, he stayed in Tokyo and its neighboring areas, which lay outside the distribution of D. pilirostris. On the other hand, he once went to collect invertebrates in a location that is included in mountainous area – Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, eastern Honshu. If he obtained the shrew-mole himself, the type locality is likely not Enoshima but Nikko. Here, we suggest that the type locality of D. pilirostris should be corrected from “Enoshima” to “Nikko”, according to the recommendation 76A.2 in the article 76 of ICZN.