Myomyscus verreauxii (Smith 1834)

[Myomyscus] verreauxii (Smith 1834), South African Quart. J., 2: 156.

Type Locality: South Africa, Western Cape Province, Cape of Good Hope, near Cape Town.

Vernacular Names: Verreaux's White-footed Rat.

Synonyms: Myomyscus verreauxi (Sclater 1901); Myomyscus veroxii (Smith 1834) .

Distribution: South Africa, Western Cape Province, from Olifants River in the west to Nature's Valley, Plettenberg Bay in the east (de Graaff, 1981:218; Skinner and Smithers, 1990:271).

Conservation: IUCN – Least Concern.

Discussion: A distinctive South African endemic confined to the fynbos biome (Mugo et al., 1995). Taxonomy reviewed by Meester et al. (1986); distributional and biological information provided by de Graaff (1981) and Skinner and Smithers (1990). Roberts listed measurements and treated verreauxii as a subspecies of " Myomys colonus ." Analyses of complete mtDNA cytochrome b sequences (Lecompte et al., 2002 b) and nuclear IRBP gene sequences (Lecompte, 2003) separates M. verreauxii from M. brockmani and M. yemeni ( M. angolensis has yet to be included in molecular inquiries) and clusters it with Colomys and Zelotomys, providing an hypothesis that should be tested with morphological data and sequences from a wider range of genes. Ultimately, verreauxii may represent the only species of Myomyscus . Reviewed by de Graaff (1997 t). Earliest fossils of Myomyscus, presumably either M. verreauxii or something related to it, come from late Pliocene deposits of South Africa (see review by Denys, 1999).