Thrichomys apereoides (Lund, 1839)

Gutierrez, Eliecer E. & Marinho-Filho, Jader, 2017, The mammalian faunas endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga, ZooKeys 644, pp. 105-157 : 123-124

Thrichomys apereoides (Lund, 1839)

Distribution.

Thrichomys apereoides is endemic to the Cerrado (contra Oliveira and Langguth 2004, Paglia et al. 2012), and has been recorded in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais ( Nogueira et al. 2015, Pessôa et al. 2015, Stumpp et al. 2016; but see “Taxonomy”, below).

Taxonomy.

Based on karyological data, Bonvicino et al. (2002) changed the traditional notion that the genus Thrichomys was monotypic ( Thrichomys apereoides ). Subsequently, two other studies gave support to the polytypic nature of Thrichomys , one based on karyological data and morphometric analyses ( Pessôa et al. 2004), and the other on karyological data and phylogenetic (maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood) and phenetic (neighbor joining) analyses of cytochrome-b sequences ( Braggio and Bonvicino 2004). A synthetic view of progress made since then has been recently published (by Pessôa et al. 2015a), and restricted species names to populations from type localities and nearby areas. In absence of a comprehensive systematic review for the genus Thrichomys , we provisionally adhere to that synthesis, according to which Thrichomys apereoides is restricted to a few localities in the state of Minas Gerais. Nevertheless, records potentially attributable to this species exist for localities corresponding to the Cerrado biome in the Brazilian states of Goiás and Tocantins ( Bezerra et al. 2013, Gomes et al. 2015). Clearly, a systematic review including karyotyped and sequenced samples from throughout the distribution of all currently recognized species and their type localities is needed to establish species boundaries and distributions.

Conservation status.

The red list of the IUCN ver. 3.1 assigned the category "Least Concern" to Thrichomys apereoides (see Roach and Naylor 2016b). The species was not included in the official list of threatened species of Brazil ( ICMBIO-MMA 2016).