Leptomys elegans Thomas 1897

Leptomys elegans Thomas 1897, Ann. Mus . Civ. Stor. Nat. Genova, 18: 610.

Type Locality: Papua New Guinea (= "British New Guinea "), Central Province, Astrolabe Range behind Port Moresby. The specimen was collected by Dr. Lamberto Loria between 1890 and 1893 and Tate (1951:223) claimed that "Loria collected in the Astrolabe Range behind Port Moresby," but Laurie and Hill, 1954:132 noted that no exact locality was published. Thomas (1897 a:4), however wrote that Loria’s localities "are mostly between the Owen Stanley Range and the sea, in or near the watershed of the Kemp Welch river," an area that would include the Astrolabe Range and adjacent Sogeri Plateau .

Vernacular Names: Elegant Leptomys.

Distribution: Papua New Guinea; known only by specimens from area of Mount Sisa below 1200 m (Dwyer, 1984) and the Kikori River Basin at 450 m (Leary and Seri, 1997) in Southern Highlands Province, the Wharton Range at 1253 m and Astrolabe Range at 410-520 m (near and northwest of Port Morseby), and Mt Dayman at 700 m in the Manau Range; limits unknown (Flannery, 1995 a). Flannery (1995 a) also recorded three specimens collected at 800 m on Mount Victory in Oro Province in the E peninsula.

Conservation: IUCN – Critically Endangered.

Discussion: Poorly represented in museum collections. Leary and Seri (1997) collected three from the Kikori River Basin in S Papua, one from 450 m, the other from 1280-1300 m. They grumbled about Musser and Carleton’s (1993) reference to original published descriptions as a revision of Leptomys and that these primary literature sources were unclear in distinguishing L. elegans from L. ernstmayri, but were still able to determine their three specimens to be the stockier species as Flannery (1995 a) and Rümmler (1938) had described L. elegans . Cole et al. (1997) obtained Leptomys from the E flank of Mt Dayman in E Papua and interestingly had no problem separating their specimens as different from L. elegans using the primary literature referenced by Musser and Carleton (1993).