The Taxonomic status of Rattus tondanus Sody and notes on the holotypes of R. beccarii (Jentink) and R. thysanurus Sody (Rodentia, Muridae)

In the fall of 1969, I worked at the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden and studied the murid rodents in the large collection of the late H. J. V. Sody. There I examined holotypes of the taxa he named and described in his report on "Six New Indo-Malayan Rats" that was published in 1932. The identities and allocations of four of these taxa—R. maxi, R. taerae, R. rattus santalum, and R. r. samati—will be discussed in future reports dealing with the murid fauna of the Indo-Malayan and Indo-Australian regions that are now in preparation. The other two taxa, R. tondanus and R. thysanurus, are discussed in this paper. ABBREVIATIONS AND METHODS Specimens reported in the following pages are in collections of the American Museum of Natural History (A.M.N.H.), New York; the British Museum (Natural History) (B.M.), London; the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense (M.Z.B.), Bogor, Indonesia; the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie (R.M.N.H.) (the personal collection of H. J. V. Sody now belongs to the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie and is gradually being registered and incorporated into the main collection of the museum. Most of Sody's specimens, however, are still unregistered and these are designated here as "Sody No.," a notation Sody used in his publications to refer to specimens in his collection), Leiden; and the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution (U.S.N.M.), Washington, D. C. Measurements of the lengths of head and body, tail, and ear are those made by collectors and were taken from labels attached to study skins. I measured length of the hind foot (including the claws) of all specimens from dry study skins.