Transandinomys is a genus of rodents in the tribe Oryzomyini of family Cricetidae. It includes two species found in forests from Honduras in Central America south and east to southwestern Ecuador and northwestern Venezuela in northern South America. They are medium-sized, soft-furred rice rats.
About Transandinomys in brief
Transandinomys is a genus of rodents in the tribe Oryzomyini of family Cricetidae. It includes two species—T. bolivaris and T. talamancae—found in forests from Honduras in Central America south and east to southwestern Ecuador and northwestern Venezuela in northern South America. They are medium-sized, soft-furred rice rats. Until 2006, its members were included in the genus OryZomys, but phylogenetic analysis showed that they are not closely related to the type species of that genus, and they have therefore been placed in a new genus. They live on the ground, are active during the night, eat both plant and animal matter, and construct nests of vegetation. Both are hosts to various external parasites, but are in no apparent danger of extinction. They have been assessed as \”Least Concern\” in the IUCN Red List. They resemble other lowland, forest-sized rice rats, which includes hundreds of other species of other forest-land rats, and other small rodents of the family Sigmodontinae.
They may be most closely related. to genera like Hylaeamys and Euryoryzomys,. which contain very similar species. The upperparts of the two species are much darker than the whitish underparts. Both species are characterized by very long vibrissae, but those of T. Bolivaris are particularly long. In addition to whisker length and fur color, several other morphological differences distinguish the two, including the wider first upper molar in T. bolivaris. The species was reviewed by Guy Musser and Marina Williams in 1985 and again in 1998, who documented the diagnostic characters of the species, its synonyms, and its distribution. It has been recognized as a separate species since 1983. It is now one of about thirty species, a diverse group of a group well over a hundred species, within a tribe of Ory zomyini, which is one of several tribes within the family.
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This page is based on the article Transandinomys published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
