Three new species of Neodon (Rodentia, Cricetidae) from Sichuan and Xizang, China

During a survey of small mammals in Sichuan and southern Xizang, China, three species of Neodon were collected that did not match to any described species. Therefore, we conducted phylogenetic analyses of the entire genus based on two mitochondrial genes (CYTB and ND 2) and three nuclear genes (IRBP, GHR, and RAG 1). Morphological analyses were based on skull characteristics and male genitalia.

The main results were as follows: 1) Three new taxa consistently formed three distinct clades in the molecular phylogenetic trees; 2) the Kimura 2 - Parameter (K 2 P) distances between these three new taxa and other known species of Neodon ranged from 9.0 % to 15.5 %, indicating interspecific divergence; 3) both automatic barcode gap discovery (ABGD) and Bayesian posterior probability (BPP) analyses indicated that the three new taxa were independent species; 4) principal component analysis (PCA) and discriminant analysis showed clear separation in scatterplots from morphologically similar species; and 5) these three new taxa had distinct glans penis morphologies.

Accordingly, three new taxa were described as N. minor sp. nov., N. kulakangria sp. nov., and N. konggordous sp. nov.