Pseudomys patrius Thomas and Dollman 1909

Pseudomys patrius Thomas and Dollman 1909, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1908: 791.

Type Locality: Australia; Queensland, Mount Inkerman; see Mahoney and Richardson (1988:179).

Vernacular Names: Eastern Pebble-mound Pseudomys.

Distribution: Australia; coastal region of NE Queensland, along the Gread Dividing Range from near Townsville to Kilkivan (Van Dyck, 1997).

Conservation: IUCN – Vulnerable.

Discussion: Treated as a distinct species by Fox and Briscoe (1980) and Mahoney and Richardson (1988:179), but earlier judged by Mahoney to be a synonym of P. delicatulus (Kitchener, 1985:218), where it was placed by Watts and Aslin (1981) and Braithwaite and Covacevich (1995). Recently patrius was returned to the status of a species (Van Dyck, 1997), an action reinforced by Breed’s (2000) study of sperm head morphology: " P. patrius ... has a sperm head morphology that differs markedly in its structural organisation from the spermatozoon of all P. delicatulus so far examined.".