Melomys moncktoni (Thomas, 1904)

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 : 618

Melomys moncktoni (Thomas, 1904) . Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 7, 14:399.

TYPE LOCALITY: Papua New Guinea, Northern Prov., NE coast, 8°30'S, 148°20'E (Kumusi River) .

DISTRIBUTION: Papua New Guinea; reliable records are from coastal plains and foothills (not exceeding 700 m) of extreme SE Papua New Guinea, from the type locality on the NE coast eastward to southern lowlands where westernmost record is from foothills northeast of Port Morseby area; limits unknown.

COMMENTS: Horizontal and altitudinal distributions of this species have been misunderstood due to incorrect identifications of specimens. Melomys moncktoni was thought to have a primarily southern distribution from Irian Jaya to Papua, and to extend up into moss forest (see map and discussion in Flannery, 1990b:225), but all samples from moss forest represent other species. Examples of M. moncktoni come only from the restricted range described above (based on series in the American Museum of Natural History and the British Museum of Natural History).

The forms intermedius , shawi , and sturti are usually associated with M. moncktoni ( Flannery, 1990b; Laurie and Hill, 1954; Tate, 1951), but the holotype of shawi is a M. rubex , the type series of intermedius belongs to M. platyops , and the type series of sturti represents M. lorentzii .