Oryzomys albigularis (Tomes, 1860)

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 720

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 .