Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Muridae > Rattus > Rattus villosissimus

Rattus villosissimus (long-haired rat)

Synonyms: Mus longipilis; Rattus villosissimus profusus

Wikipedia Abstract

The long-haired rat (Rattus villosissimus), is a species of rodent in the family Muridae which is native to Australia. The long-haired rat is well known for its population eruptions over vast areas of Australia which is the basis of its alternative common name, the plague rat. Most of the research on the long-haired rat has been conducted during times of massive population fluctuations and therefore little is known about their biology in a non-eruptive period.
View Wikipedia Record: Rattus villosissimus

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]  134 grams
Birth Weight [2]  3 grams
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Frugivore, Granivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit [3]  20 %
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  30 %
Diet - Plants [3]  10 %
Diet - Seeds [3]  40 %
Forages - Ground [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  63 days
Gestation [2]  22 days
Litter Size [2]  6
Litters / Year [2]  4
Nocturnal [3]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [2]  7 inches (17 cm)

Ecoregions

Predators

Canis lupus dingo (domestic dog)[4]
Echidnophaga myrmecobii (Red flea)[5]
Elanus scriptus (Letter-winged Kite)[6]
Oxyuranus microlepidotus (Fierce Snake, Inland Taipan)[7]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Echidnophaga myrmecobii (Red flea)[8]
Xenopsylla vexabilis (Rat flea)[8]

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
♦ 2Nathan 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
♦ 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
♦ 49.1 Dingo, Canis lupus dingo, L.K. Corbett, Sillero-Zubiri, C., Hoffmann, M. and Macdonald, D.W. (eds). 2004. Canids: Foxes, Wolves, Jackals and Dogs. Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan. IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. x + 430 pp.
♦ 5Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
♦ 6Population dynamics of two species of dragon lizards in arid Australia: the effects of rainfall, Christopher R. Dickman, Mike Letnic, Paul S. Mahon, Oecologia (1999) 119:357-366
♦ 7Ecology 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
♦ 8International Flea Database
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