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).