A dataset of diversity and distribution of rodents and shrews in China.xls

The rodents and shrews are important reservoirs for a large number of zoonotic pathogens. Here by performing literature review, we determined the occurrence and distribution of rodents and shrews in China at three scales including province, prefecture and county levels. The peer-reviewed literatures published in both English and Chinese were collected, standard procedures were applied in field surveys, websites and reference books to remove duplicates, and the spatial and diversity data of rodent and shrew species were extracted. The dataset contains 13,349 records of geo-referenced occurrences for 233 rodents and shrews distributed over 1,566 locations distinguished. As pathogens continue to emerge from rodents and shrews, this dataset could assist efforts to put preliminary bounds around a variety of spatial analyses of rodents and shrews, facilitate a better understanding of the transmission risk of the pathogens they carry, and be helpful for assessing the risk of future emergence of rodent-borne zoonoses.