Cretan shrew
species of mammal
The Cretan shrew (Crocidura zimmermanni) is a species of mammal in the family Soricidae. It is endemic to the island of Crete, Greece.
Taxonomy and evolution
Crocidura russula zimmermanni was first described as a subspecies of C. russula in 1953, and reconsidered as a full species by Vogel et al in 1986 on the basis of their distinct karyotype. The Cretan shrew has 34 pairs of chromosomes, while the other species examined in the study had 40.
It may be a descendant of the extinct Crocidura kornfeldi, the first Crocidura shrew to colonize Europe, which was distributed throughout central and southern Europe during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. It likely reached the island by rafting at some point in the early Pleistocene. It has remained extant on the island, while contemporaneous Cretan mammals such as mice, dwarf elephants, eight species of Candiacervus deer, and the Cretan otter went extinct.
Unlike many small island mammals, it did not exhibit island gigantism, remaining approximately the same size throughout its evolutionary history on the island. The Cretan shrew's primary predators are owls and other predatory birds. Unlike other Mediterranean islands, Crete may have had some terrestrial predators, including ground owls and otters, which may explain the lack of island gigantism.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cretan shrew” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.