List of rodents of the Caribbean
Various other rodents are limited to land-bridge islands such as Trinidad, which were connected to the mainland during glacial-period lowered sea levels in the Pleistocene, or to smaller portions of the Caribbean archipelago.
Much of the native rodent fauna of the Caribbean are extinct because of human influences, particularly following the introduction of invasive species such as Old World rats.
Oryzomyines are a diverse group, consisting of over a hundred species found from the eastern United States south to Tierra del Fuego, including also the Galápagos Islands.
In the Caribbean, they are found on many islands close to the mainland, from the Florida Keys to Tobago, but also on Jamaica and throughout the Lesser Antilles north to Anguilla.
[3] In the Lesser Antilles, most species have not been named or described, and the true diversity of the group in that region remains unclear.
Most species are known from Cuba and Hispaniola, but hutias are also indigenous to Jamaica and some smaller islands and they have been introduced to several other parts of the Caribbean.
[5] They have been present in the Caribbean for a considerable span of time, as documented by the find of a hutia, Zazamys, in early Miocene sediments on Cuba.
Giant hutias are known from Jamaica (Clidomys, Xaymaca, and possibly another, very large form), Hispaniola (Quemisia), Puerto Rico (Elasmodontomys, Tainotherium), and Anguilla and Saint Martin in the northern Lesser Antilles (Amblyrhiza).
[8] Heteropsomyines form a distinct subfamily of the widespread Neotropic family of spiny rats, which is known only from Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.
[9] These animals exhibited characters intermediate between hutias and spiny rats and have sometimes been treated as a subfamily of the Capromyidae.
[5] The genera of Caribbean rodents are classified as follows:[12] The four islands of the Greater Antilles, Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, are home to a diverse indigenous hystricognath fauna.
Cuba, the largest of the Antilles, and its surrounding islands, of which the Isla de la Juventud is the most significant, harbor a diverse hutia fauna, including many species with very limited distributions.
The rodent fauna of Jamaica is relatively poor at the species level, including only five indigenous species, but diverse at higher taxonomic levels, including the only oryzomyine of the Greater Antilles and several distantly related hystricognaths.
Several extinct hystricognaths are known from Puerto Rico, the easternmost of the Greater Antilles, which is under United States sovereignty.
[48] A more detailed study on the remains from Burma Quarry, an Amerindian site which is about 4500 to 2500 years old, reported the presence of a large rice rat, known as "Undescribed species B", which also occurred on nearby Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and Marie Galante.
The femora from this site fell into three different size classes, however, suggesting the presence of more than one species of oryzomyine.
[49] At another archeological site, Indian Creek, dated at 1 to 600 CE, a large oryzomyine was found.
[50] An unidentified Rattus, the agouti Dasyprocta leporina, and the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus), all of which were introduced to the island by humans, have also been found in archeological sites.
In addition to "Oryzomys hypenemus", another, smaller oryzomyine has also been recorded, Megalomys audreyae, though on the basis of very limited material.
[53] A later study reported "Undescribed species B", which was apparently widespread in the region, from archeological sites on Barbuda (see under Antigua).
Like Trinidad and Tobago, Isla Margarita is a land-bridge island with a relatively diverse rodent fauna.
Despite the fact that it has been isolated from the mainland for only 9000 years, it supports at least two mammals that occur nowhere else, including a bat and a sloth.
