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SPECIES Rattus sordidus

Author:Gould, 1857.
Actual Date:1858
Citation:Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1857: 242.
Common Name:Canefield Rat
Type Locality:Australia, Queensland, open plains Darling Downs (as restricted by Thomas’ lectotype designation; see Mahoney and Richardson, 1988:187).
Distribution:Australia: E coast from tip of Cape York to NE New South Wales, and some off-shore islands (see Watts and Aslin, 1981:239, and Redhead, 1995b:662). New Guinea: lowlands south of Central Cordillera from Dobodura in E Papua New Guinea west and north to Koembe in Prov. of Papua (= Irian Jaya); sea level to 670 m (see Taylor et al., 1983:265, and Flannery, 1995a:335); also on Yule Isl, off the coast of SE Papua (Flannery, 1995b).
Status:IUCN – Lower Risk (nt).
Comments:Rattus fuscipes species group. One of the two species of native Rattus in the New Guinea-Australian region that occurs on both land masses. On morphological evidence, Taylor and Horner (1973) arranged villosissimus and colletti as subspecies of R. sordidus. Later evaluations, however, using chromosomal, biochemical, and hybridization data, suggested the three should be viewed as separate species in the same monophyletic cluster (Baverstock et al., 1977d, 1983a, 1986), which is the way they are treated in current faunal accounts and catalogs (Mahoney and Richardson, 1988; Redhead, 1995b; Watts and Aslin, 1981).
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Offspring:

Synonyms:

    aramia Troughton, 1937
    brachyrhinus Tate and Archbold, 1935
    bunae Troughton, 1946
    conatus Thomas, 1923
    gestri (Thomas, 1897)
    gestroi various authors
    youngi Thomas, 1926

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