Burnt coconut bait led researchers to a new spiny mouse species in Sri Lanka’s Knuckles Range

The useful part

Subsequent efforts to find fresh specimens of the elusive mouse proved unsuccessful, despite around 1,900 trap nights in the area, leaving scientists with about its current population and distribution. They were targeting small terrestrial mammals moving through the landscape. On the ground, drift fences were created to lead animals to pitfall traps, while box style Sherman live traps were baited with feed.

How it works

• The usual rodent lure — peanut butter — failed to attract the mice in Sri Lanka, so the researchers instead turned to something more familiar to the local mice — pieces of burnt coconut.
• At the time of discovering the spiny mouse, Boyagoda was researching shrews in Sri Lanka for her Ph.D.
• Researchers observed skulls thinner than fingernails and mandibles in three spiny mouse species for the study.
• Meegaskumbura, a co-author of the new study, was among the initial research team and, in fact, collected the first specimen of this elusive mouse along with Sri Lankan biologist Mohammed Bahir.
• ‍ Less researched small mammals "In recent decades, scientists have described numerous new species of frogs, lizards, and freshwater crabs.

What to take from it

Both were females, not larger than a child's palm, with fulvous-gray pelage broken by spiny guard hairs and a slender, naked tail longer than the head and body. Mammals, however, have produced comparatively few such discoveries, partly because they tend to be larger and more readily detected. dumbara should be treated cautiously as a species potentially at risk of extinction until further surveys establish its actual distribution and population status.

Example or evidence

• COLOMBO — As dusk settled over the paddy fields at Puwakpitiya, a village on the northern edge of Knuckles Mountain Range locally known as Dumbara mountains in Central Sri Lanka, researchers began laying...
• Suyama Boyagoda/University of Peradeniya The two mice remained a scientific mystery for more than two decades, but careful genetic and morphological evidence finally confirmed what researchers had suspected...
• This is particularly evident in the island's wet-zone and montane forests, where exceptional levels of endemism have developed, said Madhava Meegaskumbura, a Sri Lankan evolutionary biologist and researcher...

Details worth keeping

On March 11, 2004, one of the pitfall traps caught a small mouse that looked different. Six days later, a second specimen was caught in a baited trap. Externally, the animal resembled Mayor's mouse (Mus mayori), a species endemic to Sri Lanka's highlands, but differed in tail length and head shape, offering initial clues about a new species.

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