Rattus nativitatis
Creators: name: Musser, Guy G.
name: Carleton, Michael D.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 1993
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Mammalia
Rodentia
Muridae
Rattus
Rattus nativitatis

description: <i>Rattus nativitatis</i> (Thomas, 1889). Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1888:533 [1889]. TYPE LOCALITY: Christmas Isl (Australia). DISTRIBUTION: Endemic to Christmas Isl, 320 km south of Java in the Indian Ocean; suspected to be extinct by 1908 (Andrews, 1909) and is now considered extinct (Flannery, 1990c). COMMENTS: For Thomas (1888b), the morphology of R. <i>nativitatis</i> distanced it from any other described species of <i>Rattus.</i> Ellerman (1941) first listed the species as the only member of the <i>" nativitatis "</i> group in subgenus <i>Rattus,</i> then placed it and R. <i>macleari</i> in same group within subgenus <i>Stenomys</i> of <i>Rattus</i> (Ellerman, 1949a). Chasen (1940) thought R. <i>nativitatis</i> to be without close relatives in Malaysia, but Misonne (1969) placed it close to <i>rajah</i> in the subgenus <i>Leopoldamys</i> of <i>Rattus,</i> an allocation rejected by Musser (1981 b) and Musser and Newcomb (1983). Three hypotheses about phylogenetic position of R. <i>nativitatis</i> require testing: 1. It is more closely related to R. <i>macleari</i> <i>,</i> the other endemic on Christmas Island than to any other species of <i>Rattus;</i> 2. It is not related to R. <i>macleari</i> but to other species in the genus or is phylogenetically isolated; 3. It is not even a member of <i>Rattus.</i>
description: Published as part of <i>Guy G. Musser &amp; Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, pp. 501-755 in Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London :Smithsonian Institution Press</i> on page 656, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7353098
description: {"references": ["Andrews, C. W. 1909. An account of Andrews' visit to Christmas Island in 1908. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1909: 101 - 103.", "Flannery, T. F. 1990 c. The rats of Christmas past. Australian Natural History, 23: 394 - 400.", "Thomas, O. 1888 b [1889]. On the mammals of Christmas Island. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1888: 532 - 534.", "Ellerman, J. R. 1941. The families and genera of living rodents. Vol. II. Family Muridae. British Museum (Natural History), London, 690 pp.", "Ellerman, J. R. 1949 a. The families and genera of living rodents. Vol. III, Appendix II [Notes on the rodents from Madagascar in the British Museum, and on a collection from the island obtained by Mr. C. S. Webb]. British Museum (Natural History), London, 210 pp.", "Chasen, F. N. 1940. A handlist of Malaysian mammals: A systematic list of the mammals of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, including the adjacent small islands. Bulletin of the Raffles Museum, Singapore, 15: 1 - 209.", "Misonne, X. 1969. African and Indo-Australian Muridae: Evolutionary trends. Annales Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgique, Serie IN- 8, Sciences Zoologiques, 172: 1 - 219.", "Musser, G. G. 1981 b. Results of the Archbold Expeditions. No. 105. Notes on systematics of Indo-Malayan murid rodents, and descriptions of new genera and species from Ceylon, Sulawesi, and the Philippines. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 168: 225 - 334.", "Musser, G. G., and C. Newcomb. 1983. Malaysian murids and the giant rat of Sumatra. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 174: 327 - 598."]}