Bandicota bengalensis (Gray and Hardwicke, 1833)

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 : 578-579

Bandicota bengalensis (Gray and Hardwicke, 1833) . Illustr. Indian Zool., pl. 21.

TYPE LOCALITY: India, Bengal .

DISTRIBUTION: Approximate natural range: Sri Lanka, peninsular India to Pakistan, Kashmir, Nepal, NE India (Assam), Bangladesh, and Burma. Introduced to Penang Isl off the W coast of Malay Peninsula ( Chasen, 1936), Sumatra and Java ( Musser and Newcomb, 1983), and Saudi Arabia (Kock et al., 1990).

SYNONYMS: barclayanus , blythianus , daccaensis , dubius , gracilis , insularis , kok , lordi , morungensis , pluritnammis, providens , sindicus , sundavensis, tarayensis , varillus , varius , wardi .

COMMENTS: The most morphologically divergent of the species now placed in Bandicota ; so impressive are the differences that bengalensis has been placed in its own genus, Gunomys (see Wroughton, 1908). Geographic variation and one view of subspecies presented by Agrawal and Chakraborty (1976). Chromosomal data reported by Sharma and Raman (1971, 1973) and Dubey and Raman (1992). Lekagul and Felten (1989) recognized varius as a distinct species in Thailand, but that record was based on specimens of B. savilei (in Senckenberg Museum).