The golden Oldfield mouse or golden thomasomys (''Thomasomys aureus'') is a species of
rodent in the family
Cricetidae.
It is found in
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
,
Ecuador,
Peru, and
Venezuela. Both the common and genus name commemorate the British zoologist
Oldfield Thomas
Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (21 February 1858 – 16 June 1929) was a British zoologist.
Career
Thomas worked at the Natural History Museum on mammals, describing about 2,000 new species and subspecies for the first time. He was appoin ...
who worked at the
Natural History Museum, London and studied South American rodents.
Description
The Golden Oldfield mouse is a large member of its
genus ''
Thomasomys
''Thomasomys'' is a genus of rodent in the family Cricetidae, named after British zoologist Oldfield Thomas. Nuclear DNA sequence analysis has indicated that it is a sister taxon to '' Rhagomys''. It contains the following species:
* Anderson' ...
'' with a head-and-body length of . The dorsal fur is thick, coarse, and long, a golden-brown colour grizzled with grey, with a narrow dark line along the spine. The ventral fur consists of grey hairs with yellowish tips. The hind feet are up to long, the upper surfaces having dark patches extending to the bases of the digits, with orange or white margins. The tail is unicoloured and ringed, clad with short hair and lacking a "pencil" (tuft of hairs) at its tip. The tail is 125 to 140% of the head-and-body length.
Distribution and habitat
The species occurs in forests in the foothills of the Andes. Its range extends from western Venezuela and eastern Colombia through most of Ecuador and Peru, and western central Bolivia. It typically inhabits densely vegetated areas at altitudes of between .
Ecology
This mouse is partly arboreal. It has been found on horizontal branches making paths between the
moss
Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and hor ...
es and
liverworts
The Marchantiophyta () are a division of non-vascular land plants commonly referred to as hepatics or liverworts. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of ge ...
, and also on the ground with well-worn routes among the grasses and clumps of moss.
[ Nests have been found in trees a few metres above the ground. The diet includes vegetable matter, fruits, seeds and small invertebrates.][
]
Status
The golden Oldfield mouse has a wide range and is a fairly common species in most parts of its range, though less common in Ecuador. Deforestation is occurring throughout its range and populations may be declining, but the total population is likely to be large and any downward trend in populations is probably slow, so the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed its conservation status as being of " least concern".
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1760955
Thomasomys
Mammals of Colombia
Mammals described in 1860
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot