Common names: Black-tailed Tree Rat (English), Swartstertboomrot, Swartstertrot (Afrikaans), Khuruvuru (Tsonga). This largely southern African species has been recorded from western Angola in the north of its range, southwards through much of Namibia and Botswana to the northwestern parts of South Africa where it inhabits arid Acacia savannah (Figure 1). The precise delineation of this species' range remains controversial, as it is often mistaken for T. paedulcus (Skinner and Chimimba 2005). More specifically, the eastern limits of its distribution are unknown, and it could extent further east than is presented on Figure 1 (see Monadjem et al. 2015). Although Taylor et al. (1995) suggest that T. nigricauda and T. paedulcus have largely overlapping distributions extending throughout southern Africa (Skinner and Chimimba 2005), recent contrasting evidence suggests that it is more likely that much of their distributions do not overlap and T. paedulcus may be restricted to the eastern regions of southern Africa, and T. nigricauda to the western regions (see Monadjem et al. 2015). Further vetting of museum records is required to delimit the respective distributions of T. nigricauda and T. paedulcus. Similarly, the records on or south of the Gariep River must be vetted to ensure they do not refer to T. shortridgei (Monadjem et al. 2015). Currently, the degree of allopatry with T. shortridgei is unknown (Nel 2013).