Beamys Thomas, 1909

Denys, Christiane, Lalis, Aude, Lecompte, Émilie, Cornette, Raphaël, Moulin, Sibyle, Makundi, Rhodes H., Machang, Robert S., Volobouev, Vitaly & Aniskine, Vladimir M., 2011, A faunal survey in Kingu Pira (south Tanzania), with new karyotypes of several small mammals and the description of a new Murid species (Mammalia, Rodentia), Zoosystema 33 (1), pp. 5-47 : 32-33

Genus Beamys Thomas, 1909

Among the pouched rats of the endemic African family, Beamys is the rarest and one of the two species of the genus is classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN. The holotype of B. hindei Thomas, 1909 comes from Taveta in Kenya while B. major

17

16

15

14

WZYG

13

12

11

10

242628303234

LGT

6.0

5.5

5.0

13

LS 4.5

4.0

3.5

3.0

242628303234

LGT

Dollman, 1914 holotype is from Mulanje in Malawi. Dieterlen (1979) described an old skull collected in Moshi, Tanzania and attributed it to B. hindei claiming it is the earliest specimen of the genus Beamys described in 1909 by Thomas. Classical determination keys emphasize a difference in size and especially in hindfoot length to separate between the two species. New discoveries of B. hindei in coastal Kenya as well as in south Tanzania by Fitzgibbon et al. (1995) suggest that there is a clinal variation in size from north to south coastal populations. Animals from lower latitudes appeared to be larger than those from near the Equator but the sample was too small to be statistically significant.