Bunker's woodrat [SEP] parent taxon
Bunker's woodrat
Bunker's woodrat ("Neotoma bunkeri") is an extinct species of rodent in the family Cricetidae. Only five specimens are known; these were collected in 1932 by W.H. Burt and are housed at a museum at UCLA. "Neotoma bunkeri" was only described from Coronados Islands, Baja California, Mexico. It probably died out as a result of depletion of food resources and predation by feral cats.
References.
- Musser, G. G. and M. D. Carleton. 2005. Superfamily Muroidea.
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of