Nesomyinae Major, 1897

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 : 677

Subfamily Nesomyinae Major, 1897 . Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1897:718.

SYNONYMS: Brachytarsomyes, Brachyuromyes, Eliuri, Gymnuromyinae .

COMMENTS: Group exceedingly diverse morphologically, defying an unambiguous diagnosis and questioning their monophyletic origin (see discussion in Carleton and Musser, 1984). Proponents of a single ancestral origin have usually arranged nesomyines as a subfamily of Cricetidae (e.g., Miller and Gidley, 1918; Simpson, 1945) or as a subfamily within a broadly defined family Nesomyidae , which includes other archaic groups like cricetomyines, tachyoryctines, and Mystromys ( Chaline et al., 1977; Lavocat, 1978). Ellerman (1941, 1949a) argued that nesomyines are polyphyletic and dispersed the seven genera among four subfamilies of Muridae sensu lato, as reflected in the family-group synonyms all named by Ellerman (1941). Lavocat (1978) viewed Protarsomys , lower Miocene of Kenya, as close to the ancestry of Malagasy Nesomyinae , and Chaline et al. (1977) placed the Miocene fossil in synonymy under extant Macrotarsomys . Carleton and Schmidt (1990) disputed this relationship and generic equivalence; nesomyines otherwise known only from the Holocene of Madagascar.

Ellerman (1949a) provided the most valuable synopsis of nesomyine taxa and set forth the basic species-level classification currently recognized; taxonomy updated by Petter (1972c, 1975a). Locality data, geographic ranges, and type localities of named forms summarized by Carleton and Schmidt (1990). Revisionary and ecological studies required for all genera.