Hylomyscus Thomas 1926

Hylomyscus Thomas 1926, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 9, 17: 174.

Type Species: Epimys aeta Thomas 1911

Species and subspecies: 8 species:

Species Hylomyscus aeta (Thomas 1911)

Species Hylomyscus alleni (Waterhouse 1837)

Species Hylomyscus baeri Heim de Balsac and Aellen 1965

Species Hylomyscus carillus (Thomas 1904)

Species Hylomyscus denniae (Thomas 1906)

Species Hylomyscus grandis Eisentraut 1969

Species Hylomyscus parvus Brosset, Dubost, and Heim de Balsac 1965

Species Hylomyscus stella (Thomas 1911)

Discussion: Stenocephalemys Division. Taxonomic, distributional, and biological summaries of West African forms provided by Rosevear (1969). Morphometric, distributional, and chromosomal data for some species in Cameroon reported by Eisentraut (1969, 1973) and Robbins et al. (1980). Species from Côte d’Ivoire reviewed by Heim de Balsac and Aellen (1965). Distributions of species listed below based primarily on study of museum specimens. See Rosevear (1969) and Robbins et al. (1980) for taxonomic history of the alternating use of Hylomyscus as a genus or subgenus. DNA/DNA hybridization results set Hylomyscus well apart from a cluster formed by species of Praomys, Myomyscus, and Mastomys (Chevret et al., 1994); analysis of microcomplement fixation of albumin brings Praomys, Mastomys, Myomyscus, and Hylomyscus together in a clade with the last separated from the other three (Watts and Baverstock, 1997 a); and monophyly of Hylomyscus within a monophyletic Praomys group (= Stenocephalemys Division) is supported by cladistic analyses of variation in skeletal and dental traits (Lecompte et al., 2002 a), complete mitochondrial cytochrome b (Lecompte et al., 2000 b), partial 16S rRNA mitochondrial gene sequences (Fadda et al., 2001 a), and nuclear IRBP gene sequences (Lecompte, 2003). Van der Straeten and Robbins (1997) examined most holotypes of the Mastomys-Praomys-Myomys-Hylomyscus complex and sorted them into groups by principal component analyses of continuous character variation; these generally brought together all holotypes traditionally associated with Hylomyscus in a cluster separate from those representing other genera.