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).

Published as part of Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, pp. 1189-1531 in Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore :The Johns Hopkins University Press on page 1326, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7316535