Acomys I. Geoffroy, 1838

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 : 564-565

Acomys I. Geoffroy, 1838 . Ann. Sci. Nat. Zool. (Paris), ser. 2, 10: 126.

TYPE SPECIES: Mus cahirinus Desmarest, 1819 .

SYNONYMS: Acanthomys, Peracomys .

COMMENTS: Except for a brief list of species and subspecies made by Setzer (1975), the partial reviews by Matthey (1965a, b, 1968) based on chromosomal data, by Petter (1983) using morphology, by Janecek et al. (1991) that incorporated genic data, and the regional systematic revision by Dippenaar and Rautenbach (1986), no systematic revision of Acomys is available. Even the inclusion of Acomys within Murinae is questioned. Morphological evidence has been used to support a close relationship to Mus (see Jacobs, 1978) and Uranomys (see Hinton, 1921; Misonne, 1969), but reproductive biology of Acomys is special among murines ( Dieterlen, 1961, 1962, 1963), and biochemical data suggested Acomys is not closely related to Mus but to Uranomys , and is either distantly related to murines or not even a member of the subfamily ( Bonhomme et al., 1985; Pascale et al., 1990; Sarich, 1985; Wilson et al., 1987). Dental evidence links Acomys, Uranomys, and Lophuromys to the exclusion of all other extant African muroids (Denys and Michaux, 1992). According to Denys (1990), Acomys is at least 4.5 million years old and not recently evolved, and careful comparisons between Acomys and primitive murines as well as muroids in general are necessary to determine phylogenetic position of genus.

Extant species are sorted into two subgenera (Acomys and Peracomys), but these groupings require reassesment by systematic revision of genus. Chromosomal data were summarized by Volobouev et al. (1991) and Sokolov et al. (1992).