This rice rat is known from the highlands of Costa Rica and western Panama, mainly above 1,000 m in lower montane and montane forest zones.
The fur is thicker and softer than that of the related Oligoryzomys fulvescens.
In one Panamanian cloud-forest study, 17 animals produced 23 captures: 19 in ground traps and four in tree traps.
In the cloud forest at Fortuna in western Panama, spores of root-associated mycorrhizal fungi were found in one of eight faecal samples.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.