Mindomys hammondi, also known as Hammond’s rice rat or Hammond’s oryzomys, is a rodent in the tribe Oryzomyini of family Cricetidae. The species is known only from Ecuador, where it occurs in montane forest. It is named after the collector who first found it, Gilbert Hammond.
About Mindomys in brief
Mindomys hammondi, also known as Hammond’s rice rat or Hammond’s oryzomys, is a species of rodent in the tribe Oryzomyini of family Cricetidae. The species is known only from Ecuador, where it occurs in montane forest. A large, long-tailed, and long-whiskered rat, its fur is buff above and abruptly lighter below. The front part of the skull is heavily built. It is named after the collector who first found it, Gilbert Hammond. In 1913, Oldfield Thomas of the British Museum of Natural History in London published the first description of the species. In 2006, Marcelo Weksler published a large-scale cladistic analysis of the group. He suggested that it may be related to Megalomys and may be close to ancestor of the MegalOMys. In the third edition of the World Mammal Species of Mammal, Guy Carleton listed O. hammondi as an OryZomyini species, but suggested it was related to obscure groups of obscure rodents. In 2008, Guy Guyerer and Michael Carleton reaffirmed the name Macruroryzomys for O. Hammondi and reaffirmed its relationship to the group mentioned above, but used molecular and morphological characters which belong to other groups.
In 2009, Guyer and Carleton used the name O. O. Hammondi to refer to the species of Ory Zomys that they considered to be more closely related to than the one mentioned above. In 2010, the species was placed in its own genus, Mindomys. Some evidence supports a placement near Oecomys or as a basal member of Oriesomini. A record from the Amazon basin lowlands is dubious. Reportedly, it lives on the ground and is associated with water; other suggest it lives in trees. In 1982, it was mentioned to be closely similar to Meg alomys in passing under the name of the animal in passing. It has been described as a large rat with a short hindfoot with a long fifth toe, and the weakly developed posterolateral palatal pits, and an orientation of the zygomatic plate. In 1970, Hershkovitz treated the species in another publication and noted that he had not explicitly mentioned characters differentiating it from other taxa in his 1948 publication. He considered the animal to be most closelyrelated to Nectomys russulus, a species he had himself described in 1897 and which is now recognized as a synonym of Sigmodontomys alfari.
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This page is based on the article Mindomys published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
