The Yemeni mouse (''Ochromyscus yemeni'') is a species 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 n ...

in the family

Muridae The Muridae, or murids, are the largest family of rodents and of mammals, containing approximately 1,383 species, including many species of mice, rats, and gerbils found naturally throughout Eurasia, Africa, and Australia. The name Muridae comes ...

. It is found in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Ara ...

and

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast and ...

. It is the only modern member of the

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...

Praomyini Praomyini is a tribe of muroid rodents in the subfamily Murinae. Species in this tribe are found mostly throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, but one species ('' Mastomys erythroleucus'') is found in North Africa, and another ('' Ochromyscus yemeni'') is ...

to be found outside of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. It was initially described as a subspecies of '' Myomys fumatus'' in its 1953

description Description is the pattern of narrative development that aims to make vivid a place, object, character, or group. Description is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as ''modes of discourse''), along with exposition, argumentation, and narra ...

Colin Campbell Sanborn Colin Campbell Sanborn (1897–1962) was a US ecologist and biologist, employed as curator of birds and mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. His works include taxonomic revisions of the Chiroptera bat families, and he was reco ...

and

Harry Hoogstraal Harry Hoogstraal (born in Chicago, Illinois, February 24, 1917, died in Cairo, Egypt, on his 69th birthday, February 24, 1986) was an American entomologist and parasitologist. He was described as "the greatest authority on ticks and tickborne dis ...

. Some parasites found on this species include the mite '' Laelaps nuttalli''. and the flea ''

Xenopsylla cheopis The Oriental rat flea (''Xenopsylla cheopis''), also known as the tropical rat flea or the rat flea, is a parasite of rodents, primarily of the genus ''Rattus'', and is a primary vector for bubonic plague and murine typhus. This occurs when a fl ...

''.

References

Further reading