Mt Kerinci squirrels are Sundasciurus altitudinis (Sumatran Mountain Squirrel), which is a montane split from the Slender Squirrel S. tenuis (found only in the lowlands). Similarly at Bukit Fraser the former "Slender Squirrel" is a montane species, S. tahan. Both montane species are more closely related to Bornean montane species than to the lowland S. tenuis of Sumatra and Malaysia.
Thanks for the comment, much appreciated. I've been grappling with Sundasciurus a bit (and the squirrels generally) I don't really have a good reference for Sumatran mammals.
@LaughingDove yes, Indonesia is awkward because there is no single reference for mammals other than checklists - now you've got separate mammal field guides for mainland southeast Asia, for Borneo, and then there are the Flannery books for Sulawesi and the Moluccas, and for New Guinea - but the middle bit with Sumatra and Java is missing from any of them.
When I first started going to Asia there wasn't even a mammal field guide for mainland southeast Asia and the internet wasn't as full as it is now (to put it mildly!), so I pieced together annotated lists from all sorts of sources and used that. You also can't totally rely on older trip reports for accurate IDs because they were doing the same as what I did then (and often species lists for places like national parks are partly created using such reports so there can be ID issues there as well, which in turn means even recent reports can contain ID errors from using those lists). There is a recent mammal checklist for Indonesia which doesn't include altitudinis, so you still see reports on Mammalwatching and other sites listing Slender Squirrel for Mt Kerinci.
When I went to Kerinci altitudinis was still a subspecies of tenuis, and I assumed the Niobe Ground Squirrel was the Three-striped Ground Squirrel because the Niobe was so poorly known that it was barely mentioned anywhere and (at that time) there were no photos of it available. When Thorington et al were doing their squirrel book I sent them some photos of various species they needed, and asked them about that one and they confirmed it was Niobe (mine is the photo they used in their book), and now it is always getting reported from there.
@Chlidonias you've actually pre-empted a misidentification that was going to appear in my next set of photos with Niobe/Three-striped Ground Squirrel so thank you very much for that!
I've been referring to a checklist of mammals for Kerinci National Park which just says three-striped ground squirrel. The I guess all niobe ground squirrels are a major annoyance to all the bird guides (who also call them three-striped) because they steal all the mealworms that are put out at hides for pittas and the pittas are quite scared of them (especially graceful pitta which is a target of the next day's post in my thread).
Do you know the altitudinal range for them Vs three striped? The Tapan road goes around 2000m to 200m so I guess there's somewhere along there that they would become the other species?
@LaughingDove I have read 1000m is the upper limit of insignis but it is very much a lowland species and there is so little information available that I'd imagine even that is too high. Certainly the only species on Mt Kerinci is niobe though.
