Pogonomys loriae Thomas, 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 : 641

Pogonomys loriae Thomas, 1897 . Ann. Mus. Civ. Stor. Nat. Genova, 18:613.

TYPE LOCALITY: Papua New Guinea, Central Prov., mountains behind Astrolabe Range, near Mt Wori, Haveri, 700 m (see Laurie and Hill, 1954:96, for details) .

DISTRIBUTION: New Guinea; throughout highland habitats from Vogelkop in the west to the Owen Stanley Range in the east; also a small sample from Fly River drainage in SC Papua New Guinea (in the American Museum of Natural History); and on Goodenough and Fergusson Isis in the the d'Entrecasteaux Arch. Australia, NE coastal Queensland (see discussion and map in Watts and Aslin, 1981:64).

SYNONYMS: dryas , fergussoniensis .

COMMENTS: The morphological and geographic definition of this species is unsatisfactory. Significance of the appreciable geographic variation in external, cranial, and dental dimensions among samples need to be assessed by a careful revision; more than one species may be represented. Mahoney and Richardson (1988: 170) catalogued taxonomic, distributional, and biological references for the Australian sample (which was identiifed as P. mollipilosus by Watts and Aslin, 1981); we provisionally include it under P. loriae .