Wondiwoi tree kangaroo
| Wondiwoi tree kangaroo | ||||||||||||
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| Dendrolagus mayri | ||||||||||||
| Rothschild & Dollman , 1933 |
The Wondiwoi tree kangaroo ( Dendrolagus mayri ) is a species of tree kangaroo that has hardly been explored . The type epithet honors Ernst Mayr , who discovered this species. The species was thought to be lost for 90 years.
features
The type specimen is an adult male with a head-trunk length of 63.5 cm, a tail length of 57 cm and a weight of 9.25 kg. The back is dark brown, the belly golden. The fur hair is characterized by silver-yellow tips. The dark black ears contrast sharply with the rest of the body. The rump and limbs are reddish. The tail is almost white.
distribution
The Wondiwoi tree kangaroo is in Wondiwoi Mountains on the Wandammenhalbinsel in West New Guinea endemic .
status
The IUCN lists the Wondiwoi tree kangaroo in the category “ critically endangered ” with the addition “probably extinct” ( possibly extinct ). For 90 years it was known only from the holotype collected by Ernst Mayr of the American Museum of Natural History in 1928 . The Wondiwoi Mountains have been little explored and previous searches for this species have failed. In July 2018, the British amateur botanist Michael Smith was able to photograph a tree kangaroo at Mount Wondiwoi, which was identified as the Wondiwoi tree kangaroo by marsupial expert Roger Martin of James Cook University .
Systematics
The Wondiwoi tree kangaroo was classified as a subspecies of the Doria tree kangaroo by Walter Rothschild and Guy Dollman in 1933 . In 2007 it was classified as an independent species by the biologist Kristofer M. Helgen, which was adopted by the IUCN in 2008. In the fifth volume of the Handbook of the Mammals of the World (2015), however, it is again considered a subspecies of D. doria .
literature
- Tim Flannery, Roger Martin, Alexandra Szalay, Peter Schouten: Tree Kangaroos: A Curious Natural History . Reed, Melbourne. 1996 ISBN 978-0-7301-0492-6
- Tim Flannery: The Mammals of New Guinea . 2nd Edition. Reed Books, Sydney, Australia, 1995. ISBN 978-0-8014-3149-4
Web links
- Description from Tim Flannery , Roger Martin, Alexandra Szalay: Tree Kangaroos: A Curious Natural History. Melbourne 1996
- Dendrolagus mayri inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Leary, T., Seri, L., Flannery, T., Wright, D., Hamilton, S, Helgen, K., Singadan, R., Menzies, J., Allison, A. & James, R ., 2008. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jonathan Bucks: Bouncing back! Tree kangaroo thought to have gone extinct is captured on film for the first time in 90 YEARS by an amateur photographer In: Daily Mail from August 19, 2018
- ^ Helgen, KM 2007. A Taxonomic and Geographic Overview of the Mammals of Papua. In: AJ Marshall and Bruce Beehler (Eds.): The Ecology of Papua, pp. 689-749. Periplus Editions, Singapore
- ↑ Mark Eldridge & Graeme Coulson: Family Macropodidae (Kangaroos and Wallabies) In: Don E. Wilson, Russell A. Mittermeier (Eds.): Handbook of the Mammals of the World, Vol 5: Monotremes and Marsupials , 2015. ISBN 978- 84-96553-99-6