Pseudomys shortridgei Thomas 1906

Pseudomys shortridgei Thomas 1906, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1906: 765.

Type Locality: Australia, SW Western Australia, neighborhood of Woyerling Reserve, 973 ft (297 m); additional information in Mahoney and Richardson (1988:180).

Vernacular Names: Heath Pseudomys.

Distribution: Australia; S Western Australia and SW Victoria (Grampian Mtns and Portland areas); see maps in Watts and Aslin (1981:185) and Menkhorst (1995 e:223); living specimen collected in 1967 from South Australia where the species is otherwise represented only by subfossils (Robinson et al., 2000).

Conservation: U.S. ESA – Endangered; IUCN – Lower Risk (cd).

Discussion: Thought to be extinct in Western Australia (Watts and Aslin, 1981), but recently rediscovered there (Baynes et al., 1987). Level of DNA sequence divergence between Western and South Australian populations examined by Cooper et al. (2003 b). Electrophoretic data suggested P. shortridgei is phylogenetically isolated from all other species of Pseudomys (Baverstock et al., 1981); spermatozoal morphology unlike most other Pseudomys but similar to that of P. delicatulus, P. novaehollandiae, and P. pilligaensis (Breed, 1983); phallic anatomy linked P. shortridgei to P. albocinereus and P. fumeus, a group that could be generically recognized by calling it Gyomys (Lidicker and Brylski, 1987:635) . Gross and microscopic anatomy of the gastrointestinal tract documented by Meulman et al. (1999). Reviewed by Watts and Aslin (1981) and Cockburn (1995 c).