1936. Nyctimene bougainville Troughton, Rec. Australian Mus., 19:349, April 7, type from Bougainville.
1954. Nyctimene albiventer bougainville, Laurie and Hill, List of land mammals of New Guinea, Celebes and adjacent islands, p. 46, June 30.
1953. Nyctimene papuanus bougainville, Pohle, Z. Säugetierk., 17:130, October 27.
Specimens examined (nine males, one female; nine in alcohol, nine crania extracted and cleaned).—Bougainville in December, AM-M. 5786 (paratype); Guadalcanal in May, 23812, 23815, 23827; Kolombangara in January and February, 23369, 23381, 23388, 23406, 23444, 23456.
Measurements.—See [Table 3].
Remarks.—Heretofore, Nyctimene albiventer bougainville was not known from Kolombangara and Guadalcanal. The subspecies apparently ranges throughout the western chain of the Solomons.
Troughton (1936:350) considered Nyctimene bougainville specifically distinct from its nearest ally, N. papuanus. Pohle (1953:130) did not examine specimens of either kind, but on the basis of Troughton's description decided that N. bougainville differed only subspecifically from N. papuanus. Laurie and Hill (1954:46) synonymized bougainville and papuanus with N. albiventer. However, Troughton (1936:350) pointed out that in addition to size bougainville differed from papuanus by having narrower and longer pm3 and pm4. Judging from specimens examined by me, such is the case, and the difference is even more pronounced in m1.
Specimens of N. a. bougainville from Kolombangara and Guadalcanal agree with a paratype of this subspecies from Bougainville. Geographic variation, if present in the population in the western chain of islands (see [Fig. 12]), is slight and not notable in the series available. Some individual variation was found, especially in the shape of the interorbital region of the skull. An adult male from Kolombangara is unusually dark, almost black; color of the other specimens (all in alcohol) is consistent according to sex.
Nyctimene albiventer from Choiseul and Santa Ysabel is smaller, in all respects, than N. albiventer from Bougainville, Kolombangara, and Guadalcanal (see [Table 3)], and therefore may be named and described as follows: