Coccymys ruemmleri (Tate and Archbold, 1941)

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 585

Coccymys ruemmleri (Tate and Archbold, 1941) . Am. Mus. Novit., 1101:6.

TYPE LOCALITY: New Guinea, Irian Jaya, N slope Mt Wilhelmina, Lake Habbema, 3225 m .

DISTRIBUTION: New Guinea; Central Cordillera from Mt Wilhelmina in Irian Jaya to Mt Kaindi in Papua New Guinea, above 1900 m.

SYNONYMS: shawmayeri .

COMMENTS: The species ruemmleri was originally described as a Pogonomelomys ( Tate and Archbold, 1941) , but its morphology was so different from the other species in the genus that Tate (1951) placed it in a group within Pogonomelomys separate from mayeri and bruijnii, the species considered typical of the genus. The distinctivness of ruemmleri was reinforced by Lidicker's (1968) study of phallic morphology; others have noted that ruemmleri was not part of the same monophyletic group containing the other species of Pogonomelomys (e.g., Flannery, 1990b). Finally, Menzies (1990) made ruemmleri the type species of Coccymys . Before the reports of Lidicker, Flannery, and Menzies, the unique character of ruetnmleri had been ascertained by Jack Mahoney, who died before he could finish his revision of the group. The form shawmayeri was described by Hinton (1943) as a remarkable species of Rattus unlike any of the New Guinea species and possibly closely related to Nepal and Sikkim endemics.