Mus mahomet Rhoads, 1896

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 : 624

Mus mahomet Rhoads, 1896 . Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, p. 532.

TYPE LOCALITY: SC Ethiopia, Sheikh Mahomet .

DISTRIBUTION: Ethiopian highlands (1500-3400 m; Rupp, 1980; specimens in the Field Museum of Natural History; see map in Yalden et al., 1976), SW Uganda and SW Kenya (specimens in the National Museum of Natural History); limits unknown.

SYNONYMS: emesi.

COMMENTS: Subgenus Nannomys . Heller (1911) described emesi as a subspecies of M. musculoides , but Hollister (1919:96) and Hatt (1940a) treated it a a distinct species. Our study of Hatt's series from NE Zaire in the American Museum of Natural History revealed they consisted of M. musculoides and M. sorella . The holotype of emesi and most of Hollister's other examples from Uganda do represent a species distinct from M. musculoides ; in morphology and chromatic traits, we cannot distinguish the series of emesi from the large samples of mahomet collected by Osgood in Ethiopia. M. mahomet is sympatric with M. musculoides in Uganda and Kenya and narrowly sympatric or closely parapatric with M. setulosus in Ethiopia ( Yalden et al., 1976; specimens in the Field Museum of Natural History). Yalden et al. (1976:30) suspected kerensis might be the correct name for M. mahomet .