Rattus villosissimus

• Main Authors: Guy G. Musser, Michael D. Carleton
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Smithsonian Institution Press 1993
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Chordata; Mammalia; Rodentia; Muridae; Rattus; Rattus villosissimus; Rattus rattus
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7285111; http://treatment.plazi.org/id/03D087AEFF57FF1AFEF4084BFBE3FA4D

Rattus villosissimus (Waite, 1898). Proc. R. Soc. Victoria, 10:125. TYPE LOCALITY: Australia, Queensland, "from probably the vicinity of Goonhaghooheeny Billabong, Cooper Creek" (see Mahoney and Richardson, 1988). DISTRIBUTION: Australia; broad inland range from NW Western Australia through Northern Territory into most of Queensland and N South Australia and N New South Wales (see map in Watts and Aslin, 1981:245). SYNONYMS: longipilis (Gould, 1854, not Waterhouse, 1837), profusus. COMMENTS: Geographic range is allopatric to the coastal R. sordidus in Queensland and R. colletti in Northern Territory (see map in Taylor and Horner, 1973:72). The three species are closely related; villosissimus was treated as a subspecies of R. sordidus by Taylor and Horner (1973), but is considered genically closer to colletti by Baverstock et al. (1983a, 1986). See accounts of sordidus and colletti. Analyses of electrophoretic data by Gemmeke and Niethammer (1984) indicated R. villosissimus to be greatly separated from R. argentiventer, R. exulans, R. norvegicus, and R. tiomanicus, and closer to species of Bandicota and Maxomys. Published as part of Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, pp. 501-755 in Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London :Smithsonian Institution Press on page 662, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7353098