Phaulomys Thomas, 1905

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 : 532

Phaulomys Thomas, 1905 . Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 7, 15:493.

TYPE SPECIES: Evotomys smithii Thomas, 1905 .

COMMENTS: Originally described as a subgenus of Evotomys (= Clethrionomys ) and included in Eothenomys by most workers ( Aimi, 1980; Corbet, 1978c). Kawamura (1988), however, reinstated Phaulomys as a genus containing the two species listed below. Although the extant species have rootless molars, they can be derived through a transitional series of late Pleistocene samples from the middle Pleistocene Clethrionomys japonicus , which has molars with definite roots. Study of the variation in molar and external traits among species of Eothenomys and Anteliomys also led Tanaka (1971) to recognize Phaulomys as a genus distinct from Eothenomys. Chromosomal analyses of smithii suggest that Clethrionomys and Phaulomys have been derived from a common ancestor ( Ando et al., 1988). The removal of Japanese Phaulomys from Eothenomys, whose species-diversity centers in the mountains of China, and its proposed association with Clethrionomys is zoogeographically plausible and outlines a precise hypothesis that can be tested by analyses of other data sets. Aimi (1980) retraced the complex taxonomic history of species allocated to either Evotomys, Clethrionomys, Anteliomys, Phaulomys, or Eothenomys.