Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Muridae > Hydromys > Hydromys chrysogaster

Hydromys chrysogaster (Golden-bellied water rat)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Hydromys chrysogaster, commonly known as rakali, rabe or water-rat, is an Australian native rodent first described in 1804. The change to the aboriginal name Rakali was intended to foster a positive public attitude by Environment Australia. It is the only member of the genus Hydromys with a range extending beyond Papua New Guinea and Indonesian West Papua. Having effectively adapted and colonised a unique niche of semi-aquatic and nocturnal lifestyle. This species lives in burrows on the banks of rivers, lakes and estuaries and feeds on aquatic insects, fish, crustaceans, mussels, snails, frogs, birds' eggs and water birds. Rakali have a body 231–370 millimetres (9.1–14.6 in) in length, weigh, 340–1,275 grams (0.750–2.811 lb) and have a thick tail measuring around 242–345 millimetres (9.5–
View Wikipedia Record: Hydromys chrysogaster

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
3
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
22
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 7.88
EDGE Score: 2.18
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Gestation [2]  36 days
Litter Size [2]  4
Litters / Year [2]  2
Maximum Longevity [2]  7 years
Snout to Vent Length [4]  12 inches (31 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams, Coastal
Weaning [2]  30 days
Adult Weight [2]  1.874 lbs (850 g)
Birth Weight [2]  24 grams
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Ectothermic [3]  10 %
Diet - Endothermic [3]  10 %
Diet - Fish [3]  30 %
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  50 %
Forages - Ground [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  5 months 13 days
Male Maturity [2]  4 months 15 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Southwest Australia Australia No
Wallacea East Timor, Indonesia No

Predators

Echidnophaga myrmecobii (Red flea)[5]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2de 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
♦ 3Hamish 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
♦ 4Nathan 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
♦ 5Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
♦ 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.
♦ 7International Flea Database
♦ 8Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
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