P. leonardi was formerly considered a
subspecies of the
particolored flying squirrel (
Hylopetes alboniger) as
H. a. leonardi. It was initially described as a species of
Pteromys from a single specimen collected in
Myanmar in 1921 by
Oldfield Thomas, which remained the only record of the taxon for over 90 years. Future taxonomic treatments, without serious review of the taxon, considered it a subspecies of
H. alboniger, and other treatments outright considered it synonymous with
H. alboniger. In surveys from 2014 to 2016, whose results were published in 2021, several flying squirrels morphologically very similar to the original
H. a. leonardi specimen were collected on
Mt. Gaoligong in
Yunnan; genetic analysis performed upon these found these to not only represent their own species, but a completely separate genus most closely related to
Iomys, a genus of flying squirrel restricted to
Sundaland. This new genus was named
Priapomys after the Greek fertility god
Priapus, as reference to the very large
glans penis of male members of this species. The
American Society of Mammalogists recognizes these results.
Priapomys and
Iomys are thought to have diverged during the mid-
Miocene. == Description ==