Melomys Thomas 1922a

Fabre, Pierre-Henri, Fitriana, Yuli S., Semiadi, Gono, Pagès, Marie, Aplin, Ken, Supriatna, Nanang & Helgen, Kristofer M., 2018, New record of Melomys burtoni (Mammalia, Rodentia, Murinae) from Halmahera (North Moluccas, Indonesia): a review of Moluccan Melomys, Mammalia (Warsaw, Poland) 82 (3), pp. 218-247 : 227-228

Melomys Thomas 1922a

Type species

Melomys rufescens ( Alston 1877) , by original designation.

Diagnosis

Melomys is a murid genus classified in the subfamily Murinae (sensu Musser and Carleton 2005), within the tribe Hydromyini ( Aplin and Helgen 2010) , in the “ Uromys Division” of Musser and Carleton (2005). Species within this genus are small to medium-sized (HB max 190 mm) and are characterized by external characters ( Tables 4 and 5 ) including (1) raised tail scales, (2) one or three short hairs per tail scale, (3) a broad hindfoot, and (4) a long first hindfoot digit reaching the origin of digits 2–4. To diagnose this genus Menzies (1996) used the following set of craniodental characters: (1) broad skull with a convex profile, (2) a palate terminating before the posterior end of the molar row, (3) a zygomatic plate sloping forward at the shoulder, (4) nasal bones that do not significantly extend past the premaxillae, (5) large auditory bullae compared to species of Paramelomys (cf. Menzies 1996), (6) narrow and deep pterygoid fossae, (7) lateral extension of the parietal bone, (8) a wide alisphenoid strut that is fused to the alisphenoid canal and foramen ovale, (9) very well-developed lambdoid crests which curl forward over the squamoso-mastoid foramen, (10) a carotid arterial circulation that is primitive for murine rodents, as opposed to the derived pattern seen in Mammelomys (11) a large M 3 compared to Paramelomys , with an antero-internal cusp always present, and (12) only two pairs of inguinal teats (mammary formula 0 + 2 = 4). The Melomys population from Halmahera is characterized by small to medium body size in the genus (Weight range = 110–141 g), and has all of the diagnostic characters listed above.

Content and distribution. The genus Melomys contains 23 species ( Musser and Carleton 2005). It is distributed in eastern and northern Australia, throughout New Guinea, and in adjacent archipelagos, from the Moluccas in the west to the Solomon Islands in the east ( Helgen 2003, Breed and Aplin 2008).