Rattus sordidus Gould 1857

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 1189-1531 : 1488

Rattus sordidus Gould 1857

Rattus sordidus Gould 1857 , Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1857: 242.

Type Locality: Australia, Queensland, open plains Darling Downs (as restricted by Thomas’ lectotype designation; see Mahoney and Richardson, 1988:187).

Vernacular Names: Canefield Rat.

Synonyms: Rattus aramia Troughton 1937 ; Rattus brachyrhinus Tate and Archbold 1935 ; Rattus bunae Troughton 1946 ; Rattus conatus Thomas 1923 ; Rattus gestri (Thomas 1897) ; Rattus youngi Thomas 1926 .

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, 1995 b: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, 1995 a:335); also on Yule Isl, off the coast of SE Papua (Flannery, 1995 b).

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (nt).

Discussion: 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., 1977 d, 1983 a, 1986), which is the way they are treated in current faunal accounts and catalogs ( Mahoney and Richardson, 1988; Redhead, 1995 b; Watts and Aslin, 1981).