Dendromus kivu Thomas, 1916

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 : 542

Dendromus kivu Thomas, 1916 . Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 8, 18:242.

TYPE LOCALITY: Zaire, near Lake Kivu, Buhamba, 2000 m .

DISTRIBUTION: A possible montane Western Rift endemic; recorded from the west and east slopes of the Ruwenzoris in E Zaire and W Uganda ( Osgood, 1936, and specimens in the Field Museum of Natural History) and the Kivu region in E Zaire (samples in the American Museum of Natural History and the British Museum of Natural History).

SYNONYMS: lunaris .

COMMENTS: Osgood (1936:236) discussed two series of Dendromus collected at the same time and place on the western slope of Mt. Ruwenzori. He described one as D. lunaris , based on two examples, and identified the other as D. insignis , a conclustion we verified from study of his specimens. The two species are also sympatric in the Kivu Region (series in American Museum of Natural History). Thomas originally described kivu as a subspecies of D. insignis , but our study of the holotype reveals it to be the same as Osgood's lunaris , which it predates. Both kivu and insignis have been included in D. mesomelas ( Bohmann, 1942; Misonne, 1974). It is the smallerbodied kivu that is morphologically similar to D. mesomelas and the nature of the relationship between the two will have to be revealed by systematic revision of the mesomelas group.