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).