Maclear rat
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Maclear rat ( Rattus macleari ) |
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| Rattus macleari | ||||||||||||
| ( Thomas , 1887) |
The Maclear rat ( Rattus macleari ) is an extinct rat species from Christmas Island . It was named after Captain (later Admiral) John Fiot Lee Pearse Maclear , the captain of the research vessel HMS Flying Fish , which brought the first settlers to Christmas Island in 1886.
description
The Maclear rat reached a head-to-trunk length of 21 to 26 centimeters and a tail length of 24 to 26.5 centimeters. The skull length was 4.2 to 5.3 centimeters and the rear foot length 4.9 to 5.4 centimeters. The distinctive upright black hair on the back was characteristic. The fur was mostly reddish gray in color and became lighter towards the belly.
Occurrence and habitat
The Maclear rat inhabited the jungle vegetation of Christmas Island.
Way of life and food
The Maclear rat appeared in large groups . It was nocturnal and spent the day under the roots of trees, rotted tree trunks or in shallow burrows. It lived on plants, especially the fruits of papaya and young saplings. The reproductive time was all year round. The Maclear rat has been described as particularly common. While searching for food at night, she ran in all directions and did not stop at tents and shelters. There was frequent fighting, and a strange plaintive squeak echoed through the jungle.
die out
In 1896, miners established a settlement at Flying Fish Cove to operate phosphate mining in the area. In 1899 the supply ship SS Hindustan docked on Christmas Island, from which house rats ( Rattus rattus ) were able to escape to the island. They brought in pathogens such as trypanosomes , which caused mass extinction among the two endemic rat species - in addition to the Maclear rat, the Christmas Island rat . In 1902/1903 a company doctor could only make out sick animals that crawled across the floor in their agony during the day. In 1903 the Maclear rat was considered extinct. A search operation in 1908 failed.
Parasites
In 2018 it was found that the flea hard Xenopsylla nesiotes only parasitized in the fur of the Maclear rat. Together with the host, this taxon has also been considered extinct since 1903. The Schildzeckenart Ixodes nitens which is also known only from specimens of Maclear's Rat is today counted among the extinct parasites.
literature
- Edwin Antonius: Lexicon of extinct birds and mammals. (A list of destroyed species and subspecies according to systematic and taxonomic criteria. With scientific, German, English and French names). = Lexicon of the wild bird and wild mammal forms exterminated directly or indirectly by “modern human civilization”. = Dictionary of the wild bird and mammal forms extirpated directly or indirectly by the "modern human civilization". = Dictionnaire des formes sauvages d'oiseaux et mammifères extirpés directement ou indirectement par la “civilization humaine moderne” . Natur und Tier-Verlag, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-931587-76-2 .
- Walton Beacham (Ed.): World Wildlife Fund Guide to Extinct Species of Modern Times. Beacham, Osprey FL 1997, ISBN 0-933833-40-7 .
- David Day: The Doomsday Book of Animals. A Natural History of Vanished Species . Viking Press, New York NY 1981, ISBN 0-670-27987-0 .
- Tim Flannery, Peter Schouten: A Gap in Nature. Discovering the World's Extinct Animals. 1st American edition. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York NY 2001, ISBN 0-87113-797-6 .
- Kelly B. Wyatt, Paula F. Campos, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, Wayne H. Hynes, Rob DeSalle, Peter Daszak, Ross DE MacPhee, Alex D. Greenwood: Historical Mammal Extinction on Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) Correlates with Introduced Infectious Disease. In: PLoS one. Vol. 3, No. 11, e3602, 2008, ISSN 1932-6203 , doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0003602 (full text).
Web links
- Rattus macleari in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2006. Posted by: Baillie, 1996. Retrieved on 22 May of 2007.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mackenzie L. Kwak: Australia's vanishing fleas (Insecta: Siphonaptera): a case study in methods for the assessment and conservation of threatened flea species Journal of Insect Conservation, Springer International Publishing, August 2018, pp. 1-6, doi : 10.1007 / s10841-018-0083-7
- ^ Andrei Daniel Mihalca, Călin Mircea Gherman, Vasile Cozma: Coendangered hard-ticks: threatened or threatening? . In: Parasites & Vectors . 4:71, 2011. doi : 10.1186 / 1756-3305-4-71 . PMID 21554736 . PMC 3114005 (free full text).