Loring's rat

Loring's rat
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Rodentia
Family:	Muridae
Genus:	Thallomys
Species:	T. loringi
Binomial name
Thallomys loringi (Heller, 1909)

Loring's rat (Thallomys loringi) is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found in Kenya and Tanzania. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forests, dry savanna, and subtropical or tropical dry shrubland.

The species is named for John Alden Loring.^[1]

Taxonomy

Loring captured the holotype for this species during the Smithsonian–Roosevelt African Expedition. Edmund Heller placed in the genus Thamnomys in his description of the species.^[2][3] In 1923, Oldfield Thomas and Martin Hinton moved it to the genus Thallomys.^[4]

It had then become classified as a subspecies of either Thallomys nigricauda, as Ned Hollister, Glover Morrill Allen, and John Ellerman had each done, or Thallomys damarensis, as Francis Petter [fr] had done. As of 1993, with the publication of the second edition of Mammal Species of the World; T. loringi is regarded as its own species again due to Guy Musser and Carleton's classification.^[5]

Notes

1. Grayson, Michael; Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael (2009). "Loring". The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 246–247. ISBN 978-0-8018-9533-3.
2. Heller, Edmund (1910). "Two new rodents from British East Africa". Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. 52: 471–472. hdl:10088/23357.
3. Roosevelt, Theodore (1910). African Game Trails. London: John Murray. pp. 490, 495–496.
4. Thomas, Oldfield; Hinton, Martin A. C. (1923). "On Mammals collected by Captain Shortridge during the Percy Sladen and Kaffrarien Museum Expedition to the Orange River". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 93 (3): 493. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.1923.tb02194.x.
5. Carleton, Michael D. (2013). "Thallomys loringi Loring's Acacia Rat (Loring's Thallomys)". In Happold, David (ed.). Rodents, Hares and Rabbits. Mammals of Africa. Vol. 3. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 558–559.

References

• Musser, G. G.; Carleton, M. D. (2005). "Superfamily Muroidea". In Wilson, D. E.; Reeder, D. M. (eds.). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 1509. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494.
• Schlitter, D. & Boitani, L. 2004. Thallomys loringi. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Downloaded on 20 July 2007.