Tropical vlei rat

The tropical vlei rat (Otomys tropicalis) is a species of rodent in the family Muridae, described by Oldfield Thomas in 1902 from the western slope of Mount Kenya at about 10,000 feet. It is found in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda, and Mammal Species of the World also lists southern Ethiopia and northeastern Tanzania. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical seasonally wet or flooded lowland grassland, high-altitude grassland, swamps and plantations. Its taxonomy has been unsettled: it was once treated as conspecific with the southern African Otomys irroratus, and that reference, which calls it the East African vlei rat, finds at least three distinct assemblages of populations within the name and says the complex needs careful revision. The IUCN Red List places it in the Least Concern category.