''Melanomys'' is a genus of

rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are na ...

in the tribe

Oryzomyini Oryzomyini is a tribe of rodents in the subfamily Sigmodontinae of the family Cricetidae. It includes about 120 species in about thirty genera,Weksler et al., 2006, table 1 distributed from the eastern United States to the southernmost parts of S ...

of family

Cricetidae The Cricetidae are a family of rodents in the large and complex superfamily Muroidea. It includes true hamsters, voles, lemmings, muskrats, and New World rats and mice. At almost 608 species, it is the second-largest family of mammals, and has m ...

, which is distributed in northern

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

and adjacent

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

. It contains three species, two of which—'' Melanomys robustulus'' and '' Melanomys zunigae''—have limited distributions. The third, ''

Melanomys caliginosus ''Melanomys caliginosus'', also known as the dusky melanomysMusser and Carleton, 2005 or dusky rice rat, is a species of rodent in the genus '' Melanomys'' of family Cricetidae. It is found from Central America, in Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica ...

'', is more widely distributed, but may be a species complex.

References

Rodent genera Taxa named by Oldfield Thomas Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Sigmodontinae-stub