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HOME --> CLASS MAMMALIA
--> ORDER RODENTIA
--> SUBORDER MYOMORPHA
--> SUPERFAMILY Muroidea
--> FAMILY Cricetidae
--> SUBFAMILY Sigmodontinae
--> GENUS Holochilus
SPECIES Holochilus sciureus
| Author: | Wagner, 1842. | | Citation: | Arch. Naturgesch., ser. 8, 1: 16. | | Common Name: | Amazonian Marsh Rat | | Type Locality: | Brazil, Minas Gerais State, Rio São Francisco. | | Distribution: | Broad reaches of Orinoco and Amazon River basins: Venezuela (including an isolated locality in the Maracaibo Basin, NW of the Andes; see Linares, 1998:Fig. 169), Guianas, N and C Brazil, and Amazonian regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, and Bolivia. | | Status: | IUCN – Lower Risk (lc). | | Comments: | Discrimination from H. brasiliensis documented by Massoia (1980a, 1981), who raised sciureus to specific rank. Many forms swept under Hershkovitz’s (1955a) concept of brasiliensis actually belong to this "species," which itself is a composite—e.g., Amazonian populations characterized by a 2n = 55-56 (Patton et al., 2000), but Venezuelan populations characterized by 2n = 44 (Aguilera and Perez-Zapata, 1989). The latter authors, and Aguilera et al. (1993), have recognized H. venezuelae as a species, but Linares (1998) continued to employ H. sciureus for those same series, acknowledging venezuelae as a subspecies. In addition to venezuelae, Reig (1986) listed amazonicus and guianae as probable valid species. The persisting disagreement over number of valid species, uncertain correspondence of karyotypic variants to definable morphologies, and vagueness of distributional limits will only be illuminated by wholesale generic revision. Synonymy of multannus asserted by Massoia and Pardiñas (1993). |
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| Offspring: | Synonyms:
amazonicus Osgood, 1915
berbericensis Morrison-Scott, 1937
guianae Thomas, 1901
incarum Thomas, 1920
multannus Ameghino, 1889
nanus Thomas, 1897
venezuelae J. A. Allen, 1904
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