[1] Females generally give birth to two or three young during the April to August dry season.

yucatanensis by the American zoologist Joel Asaph Allen in 1877, based on four specimens he received from Mérida, Yucatán, collected by the German-American collector Arthur Schott in 1865.

In his 1877 report Monographs of North American Rodentia, Allen mused if it was not more appropriate to name the animal as a separate species, based on the observed distinctiveness of the specimens he had collected.

baliolus was published by the American naturalist Edward William Nelson in 1901, based on a specimen from Apazote, in Campeche, Mexico.

phaeopus was published by George G. Goodwin in 1932 based on 11 specimens collected in Secanquim and Finca Chamá, in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.

[8] Three subspecies are recognised: Deforestation is considered to be a 'major threat' to the population, which may also be affected by hunting, in particular in the northern end of the Yucatán Peninsula.