Pseudomys Gray, 1832

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 : 644

Pseudomys Gray, 1832 . Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1832:39.

TYPE SPECIES: Pseudomys australis Gray, 1832 .

SYNONYMS: Gyomys , Mastacomys , Paraleporillus , Thetomys .

COMMENTS: Taxonomic, distributional, and biological references to all species cataloged by Mahoney and Richardson (1988). Member of the Australian Old Endemics ( Musser, 1981c), part of which is the Conilurini where Lee et al. (1981) and Baverstock (1984) placed Pseudomys .

Data from several character suites have been used to estimate relationships among species of Pseudomys : anatomy of male and female reproductive tracts ( Breed, 1980, 1985, 1986); phallic morphology ( Lidicker and Brylski, 1987; Morrissey and Breed, 1982); spermatozoal morphology (Breed, 1983, 1984; Breed and Sarafis, 1978); electrophoretic ( Baverstock et al., 1977 a, 1981); and chromosomal ( Baverstock et al., 1977c, 19836). Despite such different approaches, no study estimating phylogenetic relationships is available that integrates all these data with information from skins, skulls, and dentitions. So of all the distinctive groups of species comprising what is now called Pseudomys , opinion still ranges from including them all in one genus ( Pseudomys ) to allocating them to three genera ( Pseudomys, Gyomys , and Leggadina ) to merging Mastacomys and Leporillus with Pseudomys (see discussions in Baverstock et al., 1981; Watts and Aslin, 1981; Breed, 1983; Lidicker and Brylski, 1987; and Watts et al., 1992). Watts et al. (1992) discussed the futility of attempting to split Pseudomys and they regarded it as a single but complex genus in which results from microcomplement fixation confirmed its monophyly relative to the other Australian murines except Mastacomys , which they merge with Pseudomys . Vie follow that taxonomic decision here.