Grammomys dolichurus (Smuts 1832)

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 1189-1531 : 1324

Grammomys dolichurus (Smuts 1832)

[Mus] dolichurus Smuts 1832 , Enumer. Mamm. Capensium: 38.

Type Locality: South Africa, near Cape Town.

Vernacular Names: Common Grammomys.

Synonyms: Grammomys angolensis Hill and Carter 1937 ; Grammomys arborarius (True 1892) ; Grammomys baliolus ( Osgood 1910) ; Grammomys discolor (Thomas 1910) ; Grammomys elgonis (Thomas 1910) ; Grammomys insignis ( Dollman 1911) ; Grammomys littoralis ( Heller 1912) ; Grammomys polionops ( Osgood 1910) ; Grammomys surdaster ( Thomas and Wroughton 1908) ; Grammomys tongensis Roberts 1931 .

Distribution: From Nigeria east to S Ethiopia; then south through N Dem. Rep. Congo, Uganda ( Delany, 1975; Clausnitzer and Kityo, 2001, discussed distribution and habitat on Ugandan slopes of Mt Elgon), Kenya ( Hollister, 1919), Tanzania ( Swynnerton and Hayman, 1951; Grimshaw et al., 1995, distribution on Mt Kilimanjaro; Stanley et al., 2002, presence in Gonja Forest Reserve), and C and S Malawi ( Ansell and Dowsett, 1988) to N and E South Africa (from Limpopo Province along coast through KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces to Port Elizabeth; de Graaff, 1981, 1997 i; Taylor, 1998), E Zimbabwe, and Mozambique ( Smithers and Lobao Tello, 1976); and west through Zambia (except in northeast on Nyika Plateau; Ansell, 1978) to Angola ( Crawford-Cabral, 1998); limits of geographic range unresolved.

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: Number of scientific names reflects morphological and chromosomal variation correlated with geography and suggests more than one species is represented ( Hutterer and Dieterlen, 1984; Meester et al., 1986); the complex requires careful revision. For example, specimens of true dolichurus from South Africa have duller pelage and more inflated bullae than animals from East and West Africa; should these prove to be diagnostic specific differences, the northern populations should be identified as G. surdaster . The Ethiopian records are based upon a specimen from Kefa (in USNM) and one documented by Duckworth et al. (1993), but not those recorded by Yalden et al. (1976), which represent other species ( Hutterer and Dieterlen, 1984).