Petromyscus collinus (Thomas and Hinton, 1925). Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1925:237.

TYPE LOCALITY: Namibia, Damaraland, Karibib, northwest of Windhoek, 3142 ft.

DISTRIBUTION: From Kaokoveld region in N Namibia south through Namibia to extreme NW Cape Prov. of South Africa south of the Orange River in Goodhouse and Pella areas; also recorded from C and W Cape Prov. and SW Angola by Skinner and Smithers (1990:314).

SYNONYMS: bruchus, capensis, kaokoensis, kurzi, namibensis, rufus, variabilis.

COMMENTS: Roberts (1951) listed capensis, known only from Goodhouse, as a species, and Meester et al. (1986) treated it as a synonym of barbouri. In describing it as a subspecies of P. collinus, however, Shortridge and Carter (1938) reflected its true affinities because its morphology is unlike P. barbouri, which Shortridge and Carter described in the same paper and knew well.

Roberts (1951) also treated bruchus (type locality is Great Brukkaros Mtn in S Namibia) as a separate species, allocating the northern shortridgei to it as a subspecies. The latter is clearly a species separate from P. collinus (see comments under shortridgei), but the status of bruchus will have to be illuminated in a revision of Petromyscus; the few specimens we studied from Great Brukkaros Mtn were examples of P. collinus.