Grammomys poensis Eisentraut 1965

Grammomys poensis Eisentraut 1965, Zool. Jahrb. Syst., 92: 26.

Type Locality: Equatorial Guinea, Bioko, Moca, 1200 m.

Vernacular Names: Western Rainforest Grammomys.

Synonyms: Grammomys rutilans (Peters 1876) .

Distribution: Western tropical rain forest blocks and outlying patches: from Guinea (Mt Nimba) eastward through Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana (Grubb et al., 1998, as rutilans), and Togo to S Nigeria, then south through Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea (including Bioko; Eisentraut, 1965), and Gabon to N Angola (Crawford-Cabral, 1998, as rutilans). This outline is provisional; samples from Gabon and N Angola should be reexamined to determine if they are this species or the smaller G. kuru .

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc) as G. rutilans .

Discussion: The species is better known as Grammomys rutilans (Peters, 1876; see Musser and Carleton, 1993, for example). Mus rutilans Peters, 1876, however, is a junior homonym of Mus rutilans Olfers, 1818, a South American sigmodontine cricetid, which has been used in the combination Oxymycterus rutilans (Olfers, 1818) by Hershkovitz (1959 a), Vaz-Ferreira (1960), Reig (1964, 1965), Carleton (1973), and Voss and Linzey (1981). Hershkovitz (1994) recently placed rutilans in the synonymy of Oxymycterus rufus (Fischer, 1814) . Mus rutilans Peters, 1876, therefore, is not available; poensis, described as a subspecies of G. rutilans by Eisentraut (1965) refers to the same genus and species, and is the valid species name for the taxon. The karyotype (2n = 36) reported by Tranier and Dosso (1979) for an individual captured in Côte d’Ivoire refers to G. poensis . Phylogenetically most closely related to G. kuru (see that account).