The taxonomic status of Nectomys saturatus Thomas, 1897 (Cricetidae: Sigmodontinae)

Zootaxa
Elisandra A Chiquito, Alexandre R Percequillo

Abstract

Nectomys (Sigmodontinae, Oryzomyini) is currently composed by five species: Nectomys apicalis, N. magdalenae, N. palmipes, N. rattus, and N. squamipes. These rodents have strong morphologic adaptations to semiaquatic habit and inhabit forests along river and streams in almost the entire South American continent. Although Nectomys is not a very speciose genus, 23 nominal taxa are associated with this group. Among these names is Nectomys saturatus, described in 1897 and currently allocated as synonym of N. apicalis, the west-Amazon species of Nectomys. Based on the examination of type material of the genus Nectomys, we hypothesize that Nectomys saturatus is a valid species. To test this hypothesis, we examined morphological and morphometric traits of 570 specimens of genus Nectomys of the same age class, belonging to the five recognized species, including the N. saturatus type series. We analyzed the external dimensions through descriptive statistics and we assessed the variation in craniodental measurements by means of Discriminant Analysis. Our results indicate N. saturatus individuals are considerably larger than the samples of congeneric species in all external traits, and they were also discriminated from the other species i...Continue Reading

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