Only Sunda and Chinese pangolin (Pholidota) are naturally distributed in China

摘要

Pangolin is the common name for animals in the Family Pholidota, Mammalia, which consists of eight extant species. All pangolin species have been listed as critically endangered (CR), endangered (EN), or vulnerable (VU) species in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species (Challender et al. 2020). In June 2020, the Chinese government upgraded the Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla Linnaeus, 1758) from a national second-class protected animal to a national first-class protected animal. In February 2021, the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica Desmarest, 1822) and the Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata Geoffroy, 1803) were added to the list of national first-class protected animals. However, the number of species of pangolins naturally distributed in China varies in the literature: Some sources have recorded only one species, namely the Chinese pangolin (Nowak & Paradiso 1983; Sheng 1999), while most have recorded two species, namely the Chinese pangolin and Indian pangolin (Allen 1938; Zhang 1997; Wang 2003; Wu et al. 2005a; Hu & Hu 2017). A few sources have recorded the two species to be the Chinese pangolin and Sunda pangolin (Liu & Wu 2019; Wei et al. 2021). Some sources have recorded three species, namely the Chinese pangolin, Sunda pangolin, and Indian pangolin (Jiang et al. 2015). All literature sources have recorded the natural distribution of the Chinese pangolin in China, and its natural distribution in China is therefore undisputed. The main issue in past records is whether the Sunda pangolin and Indian pangolin are also naturally distributed in China.