Berylmys Ellerman 1947

Berylmys Ellerman 1947, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1947-1948 (117): 261.

Type Species: Epimys manipulus Thomas 1916

Species and subspecies: 4 species:

Species Berylmys berdmorei (Blyth 1851)

Species Berylmys bowersi (Anderson 1879)

Species Berylmys mackenziei (Thomas 1916)

Species Berylmys manipulus (Thomas 1916)

Discussion: Rattus Division. Originally proposed as a subgenus of Rattus by Ellerman (1947 b) for B. manipulus and B. berdmorei, but elevated to generic rank in a revision by Musser and Newcomb (1983). They also recorded taxonomic history of names and groups associated with Berylmys, reported past evolutionary histories of species (centered in Indochina), and found that Berylmys was dentally similar to Niviventer, Maxomys, and Leopoldamys, but shared some derived cranial characters with Rattus and that phylogenetic relationships were still unknown. Sperm morphology united Berylmys with Sundamys, Rattus, and Leopoldamys (Breed and Yong, 1986), but that union was based on a shared spermatozoal form which is probably primitive. Analyses of microcomplement fixation of albumin (Watts and Baverstock, 1994 a) and DNA sequences from LINE-1 retrotransposons (Usdin et al., 1995; Verneau et al., 1997, 1998) placed Berylmus (represented by B. bowersi) in a Rattus group, as did cladistic analysis of molar traits (Chaimanee, 1998). Musser and Newcomb (1983) summarized chromosomal information; additional chromosomal data for Vietnam samples reported by Bulatova et al. (1992).