Cricetomys emini Wroughton 1910

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Nesomyidae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 930-955 : 932

Cricetomys emini Wroughton 1910

Cricetomys emini Wroughton 1910 , Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 8, 5: 269.

Type Locality: Dem. Rep. Congo, Gadda, Monbuttu.

Vernacular Names: Forest Giant Pouched Rat.

Synonyms: Cricetomys dissimilis Rochebrune 1885 ; Cricetomys dolichops Osgood 1910 ; Cricetomys liberiae Osgood 1910 ; Cricetomys luteus Dollman 1911 ; Cricetomys poensis Osgood 1910 ; Cricetomys proparator Wroughton 1910 ; Cricetomys sanctus Hinton 1919 ; Cricetomys tephrus (Rochebrune 1885) .

Distribution: Lowland, closed-canopied forest—in West Africa, from W Gambia ( Grubb et al., 1998), S Guinea ( Barnett et al., 1996), and Sierra Leone to S Nigeria; in Central Africa, from S Cameroon to SW Uganda, through Gabon, Republic of Congo, and much of Dem. Rep. Congo, to Cabinda, Angola ( Crawford-Cabral, 1998).

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: As noted by Genest-Villard (1967), pelage color and cranial morphology are fairly conservative across the range of C. emini proper. Genest-Villard declared that Rochebrune’s dissimilis is a nomen dubium in defending Wroughton’s emini as the oldest available name for populations in the Guinea and Congo forest blocks. In his description of C. ansorgei , however, Thomas’ (1904 c:413) remarks intimate that he may have seen type or topotypic specimens: "The two forms of the group [ dissimilis and tephrus ], no doubt synonymous with each other, from Landana described by Rochebrune are both far smaller and have their bellies ‘albocinereis.’" G. M. Allen (1939) followed Thomas in treating tephrus as full synonym of dissimilis , the latter as a subspecies of C. gambianus (as erroneously repeated by Musser and Carleton, 1993); Genest-Villard and Crawford-Cabral (1998) did not mention tephrus . Further museum sleuthing may disclose whether type material exists and settle the nomenclatural status of Rochebrune’s taxa with regard to both emini and ansorgei .