Oryzomys albigularis (Tomes, 1860) . Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1860:264.

TYPE LOCALITY: Ecuador, Chimborazo Prov., Pallatanga, 4950 ft .

DISTRIBUTION: Montane forests of N and W Venezuela, easternmost Panama, Andes of Colombia and Ecuador, to N Peru.

SYNONYMS: caracolus, childi, maculiventer, meridensis, moerex, oconnelli, pectoralis, pirrensis, villosus .

COMMENTS: Hershkovitz's (1944) footnoted listing of specific synonyms of O. albigularis set the precedent for Cabrera's (1961) arrangement of the South American forms as subspecies, a viewpoint reiterated in regional studies (e.g., Handley, 1966a, 1976). Gardner and Patton (1976) demonstrated the composite nature of Hershkovitz's (1944) and Cabrera's (1961) concept of albigularis; however, the determination of priority and refinement of distributions require much museum-based research. Here we tentatively follow the taxonomy of Gardner and Patton (1976) and Patton et al. (1990) and recognize O. auriventer, O. devius, O. keaysi, and O. levipes as separate species (see those accounts). Gardner and Patton (1976) reassociated Cabrera's (1961) name-combination O. a. boliviae as a junior synonym of O. nitidus .