Pelomys fallax Peters 1852

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 : 1436

Pelomys fallax Peters 1852

Pelomys fallax Peters 1852 , Bericht Verhandl. K. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin, 17: 275.

Type Locality: Mozambique, Caya Dist., Zambezi River.

Vernacular Names: East African Pelomys.

Synonyms: Pelomys australis Roberts 1913 ; Pelomys concolor Heller 1912 ; Pelomys frater Thomas 1904 ; Pelomys insignatus Osgood 1910 ; Pelomys iridescens Heller 1912 ; Pelomys luluae Matschie 1926 ; Pelomys rhodesiae Roberts 1929 ; Pelomys vumbae Roberts 1946 .

Distribution: Savanna habitats from S Kenya ( Hollister, 1919) and SW Uganda ( Delany, 1975) through Tanzania ( Swynnerton and Hayman, 1951), E and S Dem. Rep. Congo, Angola ( Crawford-Cabral, 1998), Zambia ( Ansell, 1978), Malawi ( Ansell and Dowsett, 1988), and Mozambique ( Smithers and Lobao Tello, 1976), to E and NW Zimbabwe ( Smithers and Wilson, 1979) and N Botswana ( Smithers, 1971).

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: Appreciable variation in size and fur color exists between samples from Angola and Zambia and those from the rest of the geographic range of P. fallax , suggesting more than one species may be present in this complex. No extant records are from South Africa but the species occurred in KwaZulu-Natal more than 17,000 years before present when the region was covered with deciduous woodland instead of thornveld ( Avery, 1991). Southern African Subregion population reviewed by de Graaff (1981, 1997 a) and Skinner and Smithers (1990).