Rattus villosissimus (Waite, 1898) . Proc. R. Soc. Victoria, 10:125.

TYPE LOCALITY: Australia, Queensland, "from probably the vicinity of Goonhaghooheeny Billabong, Cooper Creek" (see Mahoney and Richardson, 1988) .

DISTRIBUTION: Australia; broad inland range from NW Western Australia through Northern Territory into most of Queensland and N South Australia and N New South Wales (see map in Watts and Aslin, 1981:245).

SYNONYMS: longipilis (Gould, 1854, not Waterhouse, 1837), profusus.

COMMENTS: Geographic range is allopatric to the coastal R. sordidus in Queensland and R. colletti in Northern Territory (see map in Taylor and Horner, 1973:72). The three species are closely related; villosissimus was treated as a subspecies of R. sordidus by Taylor and Horner (1973), but is considered genically closer to colletti by Baverstock et al. (1983a, 1986). See accounts of sordidus and colletti . Analyses of electrophoretic data by Gemmeke and Niethammer (1984) indicated R. villosissimus to be greatly separated from R. argentiventer, R. exulans, R. norvegicus, and R. tiomanicus, and closer to species of Bandicota and Maxomys .