Small terrestrial mammals of Eastern Indochina (Vietnam and neighboring countries)

Study Extent

Small terrestrial mammal’s occurrence records have been collected from various sources: field data gathered by the Author during over 15 years, including ~1500 capture records and ~900 other samples (records) presented to Author by colleagues and also obtained in field during a number of expeditions; the dataset also included some records from samples obtained from collections of departments of theriology of Zoological Museum of Moscow State University (ZMMU, Moscow). In general samples were collected from 164 geographically attributed sites from 35 provinces and territories of Vietnam and Khammouane province of Laos.

Sampling

When combining and checking specimens, only those for which the location could be determined close enough were included into the dataset. A significant part of the records was taken from our publications where corresponding data appeared and discussed. For others ones not published yet, fieldnotes record and supporting samples information have been used. For a few samples brought into studies from third part institutions (Museums and some persons) we performed geosearch by Yandex.geo and Google Maps to find nearest geographic point noticed in supported information to obtain geoposition coordinates with resolution not worth then 1000 m. baseOfRecord: Any samples and data records with an unknown baseOfRecord were removed from this dataset to ensure that all accepted records were based on confirmed observation data (findings and sampling). ScientificName: We follow the most modern taxonomy conception as realized by Wilson and Reeder's "Mammal Species of The World" 3-rd edition (Wilson and Reeder, 2005) and available under supervision of Smithsonian Institution (Washington, USA) from http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/biology/resources/msw3/ with most recent novelties and correction made as registered in Zoobank (The Official Registry of Zoological Nomenclature https://zoobank.org). Although the Author has some reasons to believe that some species and groups need taxonomic revision, which will require a corresponding revision of the applied numenclature, the specific names are given in accordance with the actual taxonomic acts as of September 15, 2022.

Method steps

1. The data has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (Wieczorek et al. 2012), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set data tables. The core data table contains 2410 occurrences for 60 taxa from 164 sampling sites.

The presented data cover almost completely the fauna of Muridae, Platacanthomyidae and Spalacidae of the region of Eastern Indochina, as well as the largest genera Sciuridae, and includes distribution ranges of 58 species of Rodents (39 out of Muridae, 15 out of Sciuridae, 3 out of Spalacidae and 1 from Platacanthomyidae), and 2 species of Scandentia.

1. Muridae
   common name: mice and rats rank: family
2. Sciuridae
   common name: squirels rank: family
3. Platacanthomyidae
   common name: pygmy dormice rank: family
4. Spalacidae
   common name: zokors rank: family
5. Sciurinae
   common name: true squirrels rank: subfamily
6. Pteromiinae
   common name: flying squirrels rank: subfamily
7. Rhizomiinae
   common name: bamboo rats rank: subfamily
8. Tupaiidae
   common name: tree shrews rank: family
9. Rodentia
   rank: order
10. Scandentia
    rank: order

The most significant part of the occurrence records 99.25% (2392) are located in Vietnam, a few samples also came from Laos: 0.25% (18) records. The most northern point recorded in Vietnam, Ha Giang province, Bach Dich district, 23.20476 N, 105.0371 E), western (Dien Bien province, Muong Nhe district, 22.3650 N, 102.2375 E) and eastern (Tây Ninh province, Tan Binh, 13.1500 N, 109.9500 E). The southernmost occurrence records located in Con Son Island, Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, Con Dao district (8.6877 N, 106.5888 E).