Malacomys Milne-Edwards, 1877

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 : 607

Malacomys Milne-Edwards, 1877 . Bull. Sci. Soc. Philom. Paris, ser. 6, 12: 10.

TYPE SPECIES: Malacomys longipes Milne-Edwards, 1877 .

COMMENTS: Study of dental features led Misonne (1969: 106) to write that " Malacomys stands apart from all the other African genera by its unusual dental characters. This is an advanced genus which cannot be clearly related to any other one." However, external, cranial, and dental traits indicates Malacomys to be phylogenetically closely allied with Praomys , particularly through the morphologically annectant M. lukolelae , a species usually included in Praomys and relegated to the P. tullbergi complex ( Van der Straeten and Dudu, 1990) . Two revisions (Rautenbach and Schütter, 1978; Van der Straeten and Verheyen, 1979b) provided somewhat different evaluations of morphological variation and its interpretation in context of specific diversity.