Mus setulosus Peters, 1876

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 627

Mus setulosus Peters, 1876 . Monatsb. K. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin, p. 480.

TYPE LOCALITY: Cameroon, Victoria .

DISTRIBUTION: From Guinea (Mt Nimba) and Sierra Leone eastward through Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, N Zaire (Haut-Zaïre), S Sudan, WC and S Ethiopia to N Uganda and W Kenya (documented by Rosevear, 1969; Petter and Genest, 1970; and our study of samples in the American Museum of Natural History, British Museum, Field Museum of Natural History, and National Museum of Natural History).

SYNONYMS: pasha , proconodon .

COMMENTS: Subgenus Nannomys . A distinct species sometimes confused with M. musculoides , which occurs over approximately the same region ( Rosevear, 1969). Both pasha ( Thomas, 1910a) and proconodon ( Rhoads, 1896) were originally described as species. Osgood (1936) associated pasha with M. proconodon , and we agree with his identification. Petter and Matthey (1975) regarded pasha as a species, noting that it might be referable to M. setulosus . Both Osgood (1936) and Yalden et al. (1976) recognized proconodon as a distinct species endemic to Ethiopia. Our study of Osgood's specimens, some of which are near-topotypes, revealed that their morphological traits fell within the range of variation typical of M. selulosus . Our identification was forshadowed by Petter and Matthey (1975) who cited the range of M. selulosus to include Ethiopia, based on a letter from J. Prevost. Chromosomal data for samples from W Africa were documented by Jotterand (1972), Jotterand-Bellomo (1981, 1986), and Matthey (1964).