UPDATING BIOLOGICAL REVIEWS: THE HASTINGS RIVER MOUSE PSEUDOMYS ORALIS AS A CASE HISTORY GRAHAM H. PYKE AND DAVID G. READ Pyke GH and Read DG, 2003. Updating biological reviews: the Hastings River mouse Pseudomys oralis as a case history. Australian Mammalogy 25: 211-214. Key words: Hastings River mouse, Pseudomys oralis, ecology, habitat, review. G.H. Pyke, Australian Museum, 6 College St, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia. D.G. Read, P.O. Box 105, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2656, Australia. TO be most useful, biological reviews should be able to cope with taxonomic uncertainty and change, should be comprehensive with regard to topics and available information, sufficiently detailed, repeatable, easy to keep up-to-date, logical and accurate, should include anecdotal observations, and should indicate the nature and extent of support for each statement concerning a species (Pyke 2001). In addition to collating information, a review should also provide a focal point to which others can contribute new information as it becomes available, thus updating the review. In this way we can all learn and improve our knowledge about a species. We attempted to achieve these goals in reviewing the biology of the Hastings River mouse (Pseudomys oralis) (Pyke and Read 2003). The extent to which we were successful with these goals has been brought into question by Meek (2003) who suggests that we were inaccurate in some respects, omitted material in some relevant documents, and not as up-to-date as we could have been. Meek describes observations that are claimed to conflict with our conclusions in terms of habitat- use, population size and logging protocols. He chides us, either incorrectly or unfairly, for not accurately describing logging protocols that have allegedly been in place since 2000, and for not mentioning the suggestions of Jerry et al. (1998) in relation to when the decline of P. oralis began, and implies that we did not confer sufficiently with colleagues to ensure that we had the most recent information available to us. He also claims to present new information in relation to this species. We shall consider each of these topics in turn. Any species review will potentially be out-of- date to some degree as soon as it is published, and limited by the extent to which unpublished material and the ‘grey’ literature have been accessed. In our review we included citations to over 160 documents, many of which were unpublished, and we sought information, suggestions and comments from a relatively large number of relevant colleagues (Pyke and Read 2003). There are no apparent documents that were omitted, though available at the time, with the exception of a few unpublished documents that were excluded at the request of their authors. The information reported in Meek (2002) became available too late to be included. There were no relevant colleagues that we did not consult. In our review we pointed out that it is generally agreed that P. oralis habitat presently occurs between 250 and 1250 m elevation and usually consists of open forest in a gully and near a watercourse, with a dense understorey of grasses and/or sedges and with an abundance of potential shelter sites (Pyke and Read 2003). We also pointed out that this apparent consensus is based primarily on the unquantified personal experiences of many people, but with so far very little in the way of supporting quantitative evidence (Pyke and Read 2003). For some time P. oralis has been known to occur in some sites that are located on slopes and ridge-tops rather than in gullies near water-courses and in some sites that have an understorey dominated by ferns rather than by grasses and/or sedges (e.g., MKES 1992a,b; Read 1993a,b, 1994; Martin 1995; Smith et al. 1995; Tanton 1995, 1996; Townley 1997, 2000; Keating 2000). It has also been known that P. oralis may use a variety of alternative shelter sites, including rocks, tree hollows and fallen trees (Klippel 1992; MGP 1994; Smith et al. 1995; SF NSW 1995a,b; Tanton 1995; Keating 2000; Townley 2000). Meek (2002; 2003) provides additional similar examples, but these observations do not presently justify any modification to our summary statement. A quantitative analysis of macrohabitat across a range of P. oralis sites could, however, improve our understanding of habitat-use by this species. We also pointed out that existing approaches to understanding P. oralis habitat-use are based on