Uromys caudimaculatus (Krefft, 1867)

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 : 671

Uromys caudimaculatus (Krefft, 1867) . Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1867:316.

TYPE LOCALITY: Australia, Queensland, Cape York .

DISTRIBUTION: Australia; NE coastal Queensland in tropical forests from Townsville area north to tip of Cape York, and a few islands off the coast of N Queensland ( Watts and Aslin, 1981:91). New Guinea; widespread throughout lowland and midmontane regions on the mainland, also on Aru Isis, Kei Isis, Waigeo Isl, and Normanby and Fergusson in the d'Entrecasteaux Arch.

SYNONYMS: aruensis , ductor , exilis , lamington , macropus , multiplicatus, nero , papuanus , prolixus , scaphax , sherrini , siebersi , validus , waigeuensis .

COMMENTS: Subgenus Uromys . The Australian population has been studied from viewpoints of chromosomal morphology ( Baverstock et al., 1977c), heterochromatin variation (Baverstock et al., 19766, 1982), electrophoretic data ( Baverstock et al., 1981), Gbanding homologies (Baverstock et al., 19836), morphology of male reproductive tract (Breed, 1986), and spermatozoa! morphology ( Breed, 1984; Breed and Sarafis, 1978). Donnellan (1987) provided chromosomal data for samples from New Guinea. Mahoney and Richardson (1988: 189) cataloged taxonomic, distributional, and biological references covering Australian populations.

Two different chromosomal forms of Australian U. caudimaculatus exist, one extending from Mcllwraith Ranges northward, the other from Cooktown southward; each is separated by a 200 km break in rainforest (Baverstock et al., 19766, 1977c). Phallic morphology of New Guinea samples reported by Lidicker (1968).

Significance of the morphological variation among samples from New Guinea and adjacent islands needs to be assessed in context of systematic revision to determine how many species actually exist, a study that has now been completed (Groves and Flannery, in litt.).