The wrists and lower front legs are marked with a very dark tone that contrasts sharply with the rest of its pale pelage, a detail that gives the Black-wristed Deermouse its name and helps distinguish it from other wood mice in the mountains of Oaxaca. It lives in the cloud forest and pine-oak forest of that range, a mid-mountain habitat that has undergone considerable transformation in recent decades due to agricultural and livestock expansion. Like other mice of its genus, it is an opportunistic nocturnal forager that takes advantage of a wide variety of understorey resources depending on the season. It is one of several rodent species endemic to the mountains of Oaxaca whose survival depends on maintaining the remaining forest fragments it still occupies.
A small rodent with greyish-brown pelage on the back and white on the belly, with the wrists and lower front legs noticeably darker than the rest of the body—a trait that gives the Black-wristed Deermouse its name. It differs from other Peromyscus species in the mountains of Oaxaca precisely by this marked darkening on the wrists, which is visible to the naked eye even in the hand.
Small track, 1.3-1.8 cm, with 4 fore toes and 5 hind toes. Small, elongated droppings, 3-5 mm, left scattered along surface runways through the understorey vegetation of mountain forests. It digs shallow burrows under roots, fallen logs or rocks, with the entrance semi-concealed among dense vegetation in the cloud forest and pine-oak forest where it lives.
Mountain cloud forest and pine-oak forest with dense understorey, generally between 1500 and 2800 m altitude. Endemic to the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca in southern Mexico.
Omnivorous, feeding on seeds, fruit, fungi and invertebrates in the mountain understorey where it lives.
Solitary and nocturnally active, with a home range centred on the dense understorey of its mountain forest habitat.
Populations are considered to be in decline due to ongoing loss of the cloud forest and pine-oak forest on which it depends, within an already fragmented distribution in the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca.
Deforestation and mountain forest fragmentation driven by agricultural and livestock expansion in the mountains of Oaxaca.
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