Thallomys paedulcus (Sundevall, 1846)

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 : 669

Thallomys paedulcus (Sundevall, 1846) . Ofv. K. Svenska Vet.-Akad. Forhandl. Stockholm, 3:120.

TYPE LOCALITY: South Africa, "In Caffraria interiore, prope tropicum," according to Ellerman et al. (1953). D. H. S. Davis (1965: 127) reported that "type locality was in the Magaliesberg area and has been provisionally fixed as Crocodile Drift, Brits, Transvaal."

DISTRIBUTION: From S Africa (N Natal, Transvaal, Zululand), Swaziland, and S Botswana north through Zimbabwe, S Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya to S Ethiopia and S Somalia; limits unknown.

SYNONYMS: acaciae, lebomboensis, moggi , rhodesiae, ruddi , scotti , somaliensis, stevensoni , zambeziana.

COMMENTS: In body size, the smallest of all the species. Identification of paedulcus as a separate species compared with the larger T. damarensis , and association of scotti with it, was correctly perceived and documented by Petter (1973a). Thomas and Wroughton's (1908) ruddi , which was described as a species of Thamnomys , is a Thallomys ( Lawrence and Loveridge, 1953) and another example of T. paedulcus. Identification of the holotype of paedulcus, along with critical measurements, was recorded by Ellerman et al. (1953), and verified by Petter (1973a). The names acaciae, lebomboensis, and stevensoni were listed by Roberts (1951) as subspecies of T. moggi; rhodesiae was described by Osgood (1910) as a subspecies of Mus damarensis (which is here synonymized in T. nigricauda); and zambeziana was proposed by Lundholm (1955b) as a subspecies of T. nigricauda. Roche (1964) described somaliensis as a subspecies of T. paedulcus.