Thallomys paedulcus (Sundevall 1846)

[Thallomys] paedulcus (Sundevall 1846), Ofv. K. Svenska Vet.-Akad. Forhandl. Stockholm, Vol. 3: 120.

Type Locality: South Africa, "In Caffraria interiore, prope tropicum," (Ellerman et al., 1953); "type locality was in the Magaliesberg area and has been provisionally fixed as Crocodile Drift, Brits, Transvaal [= Gauteng]" (D. H. S. Davis, 1965:127).

Vernacular Names: Acacia Thallomys.

Synonyms: Thallomys acaciae (Roberts 1915); Thallomys lebomboensis Roberts 1931; Thallomys moggi (Roberts 1913); Thallomys rhodesiae (Osgood 1910); Thallomys ruddi (Thomas and Wroughton 1908); Thallomys scotti Thomas and Hinton 1923; Thallomys somaliensis (Roche 1964); Thallomys stevensoni Roberts 1933; Thallomys zambesiana Lundholm 1955 .

Distribution: From NE South Africa (N KwaZulu-Natal, W Mpumalanga, Limpopo, Gauteng, and North West), Swaziland, and Botswana north through Zimbabwe, S Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya to S Ethiopia and S Somalia; limits unknown. See Taylor et al. (1995) for distribution in Southern African Subregion.

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: In body size, the smallest of all the species. Identification of paedulcus as a separate species compared with the larger T. damarensis and association of scotti, were correctly perceived and documented by F. Petter (1973 a). Thomas and Wroughton's (1908) ruddi, described as a species of Thamnomys, is a Thallomys (Lawrence and Loveridge, 1953) and another example of T. paedulcus . Identification of the holotype of paedulcus, along with critical measurements, recorded by Ellerman et al. (1953) and verified by F. Petter (1973 a). The names acaciae, lebomboensis, and stevensoni were listed by Roberts (1951) as subspecies of T. moggi; rhodesiae was described by Osgood (1910) as a subspecies of Mus damarensis (which is here synonymized in T. nigricauda); and zambesiana was proposed by Lundholm (1955 a) as a subspecies of T. nigricauda . Roche (1964) described somaliensis as a subspecies of T. paedulcus . Morphometric contrasts between T. paedulcus and T. nigricauda provided by Taylor et al. (1995), who also identified a skull from Kenya as T. paedulcus (a different skull than the one from Kenya identified by Taylor et al., 1995, as T. nigricauda; see that account). Because Taylor et al. (1995) found T. nigricauda to range widely through the Transvaal, they questioned the identity of the holotype of paedulcus, even though specimens from 3 km NNE Brits had 2n = 46, within the range of T. paedulcus . Neither the holotype of paedulcus nor that of nigricauda was included in the analyses made by Taylor et al. (1995). Denys et al. (1999) found fragments of T. paedulcus in owl pellets in N Malawi. Southern African population reviewed by Lovegrove (1997 a), and records from KwaZulu-Natal discussed by Taylor (1998).