Praomys morio (Trouessart 1881)

[Praomys] morio (Trouessart 1881), Bull. Soc. Etudes Sci. Angers, 10: 121.

Type Locality: Cameroon, Mt Cameroon, 7000 ft (2135 m); see Rosevear (1969:399).

Vernacular Names: Cameroon Praomys.

Synonyms: Praomys maura (Gray 1862) .

Distribution: Mt Cameroon and the mountainous island of Bioko (Equatorial Guinea), essentially the distribution outlined by Eisentraut (1970).

Conservation: IUCN – Vulnerable.

Discussion: 2n = 34 (Matthey, 1965 a). A member of the P. tullbergi complex. Musser and Carleton (1993) restricted P. morio to Mt Cameroon, although Eisentraut (1970) recorded it from the island of Bioko, and F. Petter (1965) discussed samples from the Central African Republic. Musser and Carleton also noted that "The species requires definition; alleged distinctions between it and P. tullbergi may not reflect specific differences (Hutterer, in litt.). Our study revealed that series from outside of Mt Cameroon identified as morio are either tullbergi or an undescribed species of Praomys (the series from Central African Republic, for example [see P. petteri below])." Van der Straeten (in litt., 1994) wrote us that "The morphological differences between morio and tullbergi are clear and were described in detail by Eisentraut. I obtained the same results using all Praomys specimens collected by Eisentraut in Bioko and on Mount Cameroon in a principal component analysis. All this is in agreement with the breeding experiments carried out by Eisentraut." Lecompte et al. (1999) redescribed the holotype of morio, providing illustrations of the skull and molar rows along with cranial and dental measurements. Morphological traits of this holotype place it among the species in the P. tullbergi complex as that group is defined by Van der Straeten and Dieterlen (1987) and Van der Straeten and Dudu (1990), an arrangement supported by cladistic analyses of morphological traits (Lecompte et al., 2002 a).