White-tailed narrow-foot pouch mouse
| White-tailed narrow-foot pouch mouse | ||||||||||||
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| Sminthopsis granulipes | ||||||||||||
| Troughton , 1932 |
The white-tailed narrow-foot pouch mouse ( Sminthopsis granulipes ), also known under the name of the grain-sole narrow-foot pouch mouse , is a species of marsupial from the genus of the narrow-foot pouch mice . The robbery is endemic to the extreme southwest of Australia .
description
The head-trunk length is between 70 and 100 millimeters, plus a tail 56 to 68 mm. The weight varies between 18 and 35 g. The tail is brown at its base and white towards the tip. Often it is thickened, which is used to store fat. The soles and toes of this narrow-footed pouch mouse are covered with small bumps on the surface of the skin that give them the appearance of goosebumps . The epithet granulipes , which means something like "granulated foot" , also comes from this characteristic .
Way of life
Little is known about the behavior and reproduction of the species. It is most likely nocturnal . The young are born from June to August and weaned in October. The diet consists mainly of insects.
distribution and habitat
Sminthopsis granulipes occurs in two areas in Western Australia . One is to the east of Perth in the western gold fields, the other is north of Perth between Kalbarri and Jurien Bay. The habitat ranges from coastal heatherlands to dense bushland.
Danger
Until the 1970s, since the species was discovered around 100 years earlier, only 10 specimens of this narrow-footed pouch mouse had become known. It was not until the field research of the following decades that we discovered that Sminthopsis granulipes is actually quite common in certain areas in south-west Australia. Still, the species of foxes and domestic cats that have been released by immigrants in the wild and now hunt smaller marsupials are threatened. Added to this is the increasing restriction of the habitat in question by agriculture.
The IUCN lists this species as "not endangered" (least concern) .
Research history
Ellis Troughton described the species Sminthopsis granulipes in 1932 after a museum specimen in the Australian Museum in Sydney . Troughton found it remarkable that the preparation had been in the museum's holdings for several decades without having been recognized as a separate species before. But he was probably not aware that the species had probably already been described after the same specimen. Gerard Krefft had already made an initial description under the name Podabrus albicaudata in 1872 and published it in the major weekly newspaper The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, which appears every Saturday . However, this publication was forgotten.
The genus name Podabrus proposed by John Gould in 1845 for the narrow-foot bag mice was replaced by the name Sminthopsis by O. Thomas in 1887 , since a genus of beetles already existed under the name Podabrus . When the scientific names were recombined, the species Podabrus albicaudata was overlooked. After Troughton's rediscovery of the museum specimen, he correctly placed it again under the new name Sminthopsis among the narrow-foot bag mice , but was given the species name granulipes , which refers to the texture of the skin on the feet and not to the white hair on the tail, had caused the Krefft to name albicaudata . The first double description of this narrow-footed pouch mouse was only cleared up in 2015 after Australian scientists had re-registered the type specimens of mammals in the Australian Museum. Although Krefft went public with his description 60 years earlier than Troughton, his designation Sminthopsis granulipes as a nomen protectum according to the ICZN remains valid, because only this name appeared in scientific publications in the following decades. This is to ensure the stability of the nomenclature and the continuity of research on this marsupial.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Ellis LG Troughton: A new species of fat-tailed marsupial mouse, and the status of Antechinus froggatti Ramsay. Records of the Australian Museum, 18, 6, pp. 349-354, 1932
- ↑ a b Harry Parnaby, Sandy Ingleby & Anja Divljan: Taxonomic status of Podabrus albocaudatus Krefft, 1872 and declaration of Sminthopsis granulipes Troughton, 1932 (Marsupialia: Dasyuridae) as a protected name for the White-tailed Dunnart from Western Australia. Zootaxa, 3904, 2, 283–292, January 2015 doi : 10.11646 / zootaxa.3904.2.7
- ↑ Sminthopsis granulipes in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014.2. Posted by: McKenzie, N., 2008. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- ^ A b Gerard Krefft: Natural History. The native cat family, or Dasyuridae (continued). The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (new series), XIV, 645, p. 598, dated November 9, 1872 (first description, facsimile , accessed January 9, 2014)
literature
- Gerard Krefft: Natural History. The native cat family, or Dasyuridae (continued). The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (new series), XIV, 645, p. 598, dated November 9, 1872 (first description, facsimile , accessed January 9, 2014)
- Ellis LG Troughton: A new species of fat-tailed marsupial mouse, and the status of Antechinus froggatti Ramsay. Records of the Australian Museum, 18, 6, pp. 349-354, 1932
- P. Menkhorst & F. Knight: A Field Guide to the Mammals of Australia. Oxford Press, 2001, p. 68 ISBN 0-19-550870-X
- C. Groves in DE Wilson & DM Reeder (ed.): Mammal Species of the World (3rd edition ed.) . Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, p. 34 ISBN 0-801-88221-4
Web links
- Sminthopsis granulipes in the Red List of Threatened Species of the IUCN 2014.2. Posted by: McKenzie, N., 2008. Retrieved January 9, 2015.