Melomys burtoni (Ramsay, 1887)

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 : 615

Melomys burtoni (Ramsay, 1887) . Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., ser. 2, 2:531.

TYPE LOCALITY: Australia, Western Australia, near Derby .

DISTRIBUTION: Australia; along the coast "from just south of the New South Wales-Queensland border, north to the tip of Cape York, and in coastal areas of the Northern Territory and north-eastern Western Australia " ( Watts and Aslin, 1981:84); also found on many offshore islands, including those in Torres Strait. New Guinea; patchy distribution (grassland habitats) on both sides of Central Cordillera, near sea level to 2200m (see map in Flannery, 19906:231); also on Woodlark Isl in d'Entrecasteax Arch., and Misima Isl in Louisiade Arch.

SYNONYMS: albiventer , australius , callopes , frigicola , froggatti, hintoni, insulae, littoralis , lutillus , melicus , mixtus , murinus , muscalis.

COMMENTS: Results of chromosomal and electrophoretic studies reported by Baverstock et al. (1977 c, 1980, 1981, 19836). Anatomy of male reproductive tract and spermatozoal morphology presented by Breed and Sarafis (1978), Morrissey and Breed (1982), and Breed (1984, 1986). We follow Tate (1951) and Mahoney and Richardson (1988) in treating populations from Australian and New Guinea region as a single species, but the complex needs revision using data from morphological, chromosomal, and molecular sets to assess significance of the variation apparent both among samples from New Guinea and between those from New Guinea and Australia.