Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Muridae > Rattus > Rattus tunneyi

Rattus tunneyi (pale field rat)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The pale field rat (Rattus tunneyi), also known as Tunney's rat, is a nocturnal herbivore endemic in Australia. It once occupied almost all areas of mainland Australia, but is now found only in tall grasslands in northern Australia. The pale field rat is yellow-brown and either grey or cream on the underside. It eats grass stems, seeds and roots, and during the day rests in a shallow burrows dug in loose, crumbly soil. With the introduction of cattle, its habitat has been negatively affected by soil compaction. Feral cats also devastate populations.
View Wikipedia Record: Rattus tunneyi

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
16
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 4.97
EDGE Score: 1.79
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  124 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Frugivore, Granivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit [2]  20 %
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  30 %
Diet - Plants [2]  10 %
Diet - Seeds [2]  40 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [3]  3 months 8 days
Gestation [3]  22 days
Litter Size [3]  6
Maximum Longevity [3]  1 year
Nocturnal [2]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [3]  6 inches (15 cm)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Kakadu National Park II 4744348 Northern Territory, Australia
Prince Regent River Nature Reserve Ia 1428602 Western Australia, Australia  
Purnululu National Park II 604999 Western Australia, Australia
Shoalwater and Corio Bays Area Ramsar Site   Queensland, Australia

Prey / Diet

Alloteropsis semialata[4]
Buchanania obovata[5]
Canarium australianum (Mango bark)[5]
Terminalia hadleyana carpentariae[5]

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Oxyuranus scutellatus (scutellatus)[6]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Felisa A. Smith, S. Kathleen Lyons, S. K. Morgan Ernest, Kate E. Jones, Dawn M. Kaufman, Tamar Dayan, Pablo A. Marquet, James H. Brown, and John P. Haskell. 2003. Body mass of late Quaternary mammals. Ecology 84:3403
♦ 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
♦ 4The diet of the brush-tailed rabbit-rat (Conilurus penicillatus) from the monsoonal tropics of the Northern Territory, Australia, Ronald S. C. Firth, Elizabeth Jefferys, John C. Z. Woinarski and Richard A. Noske, Wildlife Research, 2005, 32, 517–523
♦ 5"Security Eating, and Diet in the Large Rock-Rat, Zyzomys woodwardi (Rodentia:Muridae).", RJ Begg and CR Dunlop, Australian Wildlife Research 7(1) 63 - 70 (1980)
♦ 6Ecology of Highly Venomous Snakes: the Australian Genus Oxyuranus (Elapidae), RICHARD SHINE AND JEANETTE COVACEVICH, Journal of Herpetology, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 60-69, 1983
♦ 7Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
♦ 8International Flea Database
♦ 9Gibson, 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
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