PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 116(4):853-872. 2003. A new small-eared shrew of the Cryptotis nigrescens -group from Colombia (Mammalia: Soricomorpha: Soricidae) Neal Woodman USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20013 Abstract. — Cryptotis colombiana Woodman & Timm, 1993 previously was known from few specimens from two isolated regions in the Cordillera Central and Cordillera Oriental of Colombia. Recent collecting in the northern Cordil-lera Central and review of older collections from the central Cordillera Oriental in the vicinity of Bogota yielded additional specimens that permit reevaluation of the two geographic populations of these small-eared shrews. Morphological and morphometrical studies indicate that the population inhabiting the Cordil-lera Oriental represents a distinct, previously unrecognized species that I de-scribe herein as Cryptotis brachyonyx. Study of 54 specimens of shrews from the Cordillera Oriental in systematic collections in North America, South America, and Europe yielded only four specimens of the new species, all col-lected before 1926. The paucity of modern specimens suggests that C brach-yonyx may be extremely restricted in distribution, or possibly extinct. Small-eared shrews of the genus Cryp-totis occur from eastern North America south through Central America to the An-des Mountains of South America. Recent systematic studies on these shrews gener-ally partition the species among four infor-mal, groupings originally defined by Choate (1970) and modified by Woodman & Timm (1993, 1999, 2000). Only two of these groups have members that occur in South America. The C. nigrescens-gvowp is pri-marily a Central American group, but with two species occurring in South America: Cryptotis mera, along the Panama/Colom-bia border (Woodman & Timm 1993), and Cryptotis colombiana, reported from the Cordillera Central and Cordillera Oriental of Colombia (Woodman 1996). The C tho-masi-gYonp is comprised entirely of Andean species. The C nigrescens-gxou^) and the C thomasi-group can be distinguished using a combination of external, cranial, and post-cranial characters. Two of the more reliable external characters are the relative size of the forefeet and length of the foreclaws: members of the C. thomasi-group tend to have large forepaws with notably elongate foreclaws, whereas species in the C ni-grescens-group have smaller forefeet and foreclaws. Cryptotis colombiana Woodman & Timm, 1993 originally was described from a single specimen collected in 1950 from Rio Negrito on the Cordillera Central of Colombia and now housed in the Field Mu-seum, Chicago. A second specimen, col-lected in 1925 from San Juan de Rioseco on the Cordillera Oriental of Colombia, subsequently was identified in the collec-tion of the American Museum of Natural History, New York. At that time, I (Wood-man 1996) noted differences between the two specimens, but indicated that the tax-onomic significance of this variation was difficult to interpret based on only two specimens. Field work during the past few years in the Cordillera Central by Colom-bian colleagues has added a number of im-portant new specimens of C. colombiana that permit more comprehensive evaluation
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