Small mammal data base

Small mammal collection at the Museum national d’Histoire naturelle

Between 1994 and 2015, Patrick Giraudoux and his team led various international research programmes, in China and Kyrgyzstan on the ecology of Echinococcus multilocularis transmission, a cestode parasite responsible for Alveolar Echinococcosis, a parasitic disease in humans. They collected 2061 specimens of small mammals (rodents, ex-insectivorous eulipotyphles, lagomorphs) during field expeditions, collecting skulls, tissues and sometimes skins. The various measurements, samples and taxonomic checks were carried out by Jean-Pierre Quéré (CBGP - INRAE Montpellier), Patrick Giraudoux, Francis Raoul and Dominique Rieffel (LCE), during the missions and on their return for analysis.

This collection, which has grown over the years, was first kept in Dijon, in the Ecology Laboratory of the University of Burgundy, then in Besançon, since 1998 in the Environmental Biology Laboratory, and since 2012 on the site of the Chrono-environment Laboratory in La Bouloie.

This collection includes more than 60 species and has no equivalent at the Museum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) since the historical collections of the 19th century. The authors, with the agreement of the University of Franche-Comté and the Chrono-environnement laboratory, have therefore offered to donate it to the MNHN. Once the administrative formalities had been completed, the collection of Asian small mammals was transferred to the Museum on 21 November 2022. Now referenced at the Museum and described on Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7614879, the corpus is available to the international scientific community.