Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Petromuridae > Petromus > Petromus typicus

Petromus typicus (Dassie rat)

Wikipedia Abstract

The dassie rat (Petromus typicus) is an African rodent found among rocky outcroppings. It is the only living member of its genus, Petromus, and family, Petromuridae. The name "dassie" means "hyrax" in Afrikaans, and the two animals are found in similar habitats. Petromus means "rock mouse" and dassie rats are one of many rodents sometimes called rock rats. The family and genus names are sometimes misspelled as Petromyidae and Petromys.
View Wikipedia Record: Petromus typicus

Infraspecies

Petromus typicus ausensis
Petromus typicus barbiensis
Petromus typicus cinnamomeus
Petromus typicus coetzeei
Petromus typicus cunealis
Petromus typicus greeni
Petromus typicus guinasensis
Petromus typicus karasensis
Petromus typicus kobosensis
Petromus typicus majoriae
Petromus typicus namaquensis
Petromus typicus pallidior
Petromus typicus tropicalis
Petromus typicus typicus
Petromus typicus windhoekensis

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
9
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
34
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 17.91
EDGE Score: 2.94
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  200 grams
Diet [2]  Frugivore, Granivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit [2]  30 %
Diet - Plants [2]  40 %
Diet - Seeds [2]  30 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Litter Size [1]  2
Litters / Year [1]  1
Maximum Longevity [3]  7 years
Snout to Vent Length [3]  8 inches (20 cm)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Etosha National Park II 5699141 Namibia  
Namib-Naukluft National Park II 12585619 Namibia  
Naute Dam Recreational Resort V 58352 Namibia  
Richtersveld National Park II 399195 Northern Cape, South Africa
Skeleton Coast Game Park II 4168395 Namibia  

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Succulent Karoo Namibia, South Africa No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Competing SpeciesCommon Prey Count
Equus zebra (mountain zebra)1
Lamprotornis nitens (Cape Starling)1
Onychognathus nabouroup (Pale-winged Starling)1
Ploceus velatus (Southern Masked Weaver)1
Tragelaphus strepsiceros (greater kudu)4

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Petronema shortridgei <Unverified Name>[5]
Scipio tripedatus[6]

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 4Noki or dassie-rat (Petromus typicus) feeding ecology and petrophily, Galen B. Rathbun and Carolyn D. Rathbun, Belg. J. Zool., 135 (supplement) : 69-75 (2005)
♦ 5Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0