First scientific observation of the largest Sahulian rodent, Mallomys istapantap, in the wild
-
František Vejmělka
Abstract
The largest rodent of the Australian and Oceanian zoogeographic regions, the Subalpine Woolly Rat Mallomys istapantap, endemic to the tropical high mountains of New Guinea, has been scientifically observed and documented alive in the wild for the first time. Camera trap images and video, as well as photographs of the habitat (Mt. Wilhelm, 3,200–3,700 masl) and hunting with indigenous people, deepen our understanding of the activity patterns, locomotion, diet, intrageneric elevational partitioning, and behavioural ecology of the woolly rats. I report the first measurements of males of the species and discuss a previously unreported morphological trait. These are the first specimen records in 30 years for this spectacular mammal poorly known to science.
Funding source: Czech Academy of Sciences (Akademie Věd České Republiky)
Award Identifier / Grant number: Praemium Academiae of the Czech Academy of Science
Acknowledgments
My thanks are due to V. Novotný and the employees of the New Guinea Binatang Research Center helping me immensely with the fieldwork; F. Sedláček for lending me the camera trap; P.-H. Fabre for teaching me the molecular work; R. Portela-Miguez for his help with the London specimens; K. Rowe and J. Robovský for final consultations on this article; and finally to the landowners and field assistants of Mt. Wilhelm without whose help this work would be impossible.
-
Research ethics: The protocol for the elevational project these results are part of was approved by the PNG National Research Institute as a basis for the issue of a Special Exemption Research Visa no. 99902702887 to the author.
-
Informed consent: Not applicable.
-
Author contributions: The author has accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.
-
Use of Large Language Models, AI and Machine Learning Tools: None declared.
-
Conflict of interest: The author states no conflict of interest.
-
Research funding: Praemium Academiae of the Czech Academy of Sciences to V. Novotný.
-
Data availability: All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its Supplementary Material files.
References
Brown, S.D.J., Collins, R.A., Boyer, S., Lefort, M.C., Malumbres-Olarte, J., Vink, C.J., and Cruickshank, R.H. (2012). SPIDER: an R package for the analysis of species identity and evolution, with particular reference to DNA barcoding. Molec. Ecol. Resour. 12: 562–565, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-0998.2011.03108.x.Search in Google Scholar PubMed
Denys, C., Taylor, J.P., and Aplin, K.P. (2017). Family Muridae (True Mice and Rats, Gerbils and Relatives). In: Wilson, D.E., Lacher, T.E., and Mittermeier, R.A. (Eds.). Handbook of the mammals of the world. Vol. 7. Rodents II. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 536–884.Search in Google Scholar
Fabre, P.-H., Pagès, M., Musser, G.G., Fitriana, Y.S., Fjeldså, J., Jennings, A., Jønsson, K.A., Kennedy, J., Michaux, J., Semiadi, G., et al.. (2013). A new genus of rodent from Wallacea (Rodentia: Muridae: Murinae: Rattini), and its implication for biogeography and Indo-Pacific Rattini systematics. Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 169: 408–447, https://doi.org/10.1111/zoj.12061.Search in Google Scholar
Flannery, T.F. (1995). Mammals of New Guinea, 2nd ed. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York.Search in Google Scholar
Flannery, T.F., Aplin, K., Groves, C.P., and Adams, M. (1989). Revision of the New Guinean genus Mallomys (Muridae: Rodentia), with descriptions of two new species from subalpine habitats. Records of the Australian Museum 41: 83–105, https://doi.org/10.3853/j.0067-1975.41.1989.137.Search in Google Scholar
GBIF.org (2025). GBIF home page, Available at: https://www.gbif.org (Accessed 31 January 2025).Search in Google Scholar
Heaney, L.R., Balete, D.S., Duya, M.R.M., Duya, M.V., Jansa, S.A., Steppan, S.J., and Rickart, E.A. (2016). Doubling diversity: a cautionary tale of previously unsuspected mammalian diversity on a tropical oceanic island. Front. Biogeography 8: e29667, https://doi.org/10.21425/f5fbg29667.Search in Google Scholar
Helgen, K.M. (2007). Chapter 3. Diversification, distribution, and natural history of the giant woolly-rats of New Guinea (Murinae: Mallomys). In: A reassessment of taxonomic diversity and geographic patterning in the Melanesian mammal fauna, PhD thesis. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Discipline of Environmental Biology University of Adelaide, Australia.Search in Google Scholar
Holt, B.G., Lessard, J.P., Borregaard, M.K., Fritz, S.A., Araújo, M.B., Dimitrov, D., Fabre, P.-H., Graham, C.H., Graves, G.R., Jønsson, K.A., et al.. (2013). An update of Wallace’s zoogeographic regions of the world. Science 339: 74–78, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1228282.Search in Google Scholar PubMed
Kumar, S. and Prakash, I. (1983). Seasonal variation in the dimension of scent-marking gland of three desert rodents and its possible relationship with their reproductive performance. Proc.: Anim. Sci. 92: 299–304, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03186198.Search in Google Scholar
Majnep, I.S. and Bulmer, R. (2007). Animals the ancestors hunted: an account of the wild mammals of the Kalam Area, Papua New Guinea. Crawford House, Adelaide.Search in Google Scholar
Novotný, V. (2021). Mt. Wilhelm conservation area and the complere rainforest elevation gradient. ResearchGate Presentation, Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354149561_Mt_Wilhelm_Conservation_Area_and_the_Complere_Rainforest_Elevation_Gradient (Accessed 16 October 2024).Search in Google Scholar
Paradis, E. and Schliep, K. (2019). Ape 5.0: an environment for modern phylogenetics and evolutionary analyses in R. Bioinformatics 35: 526–528, https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/bty633.Search in Google Scholar PubMed
R Core Team (2024). R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, https://www.R-project.org/.Search in Google Scholar
Rowe, K.C., Achmadi, A.S., Fabre, P.-H., Schenk, J.J., Steppan, S.J., and Esselstyn, J.A. (2019). Oceanic islands of Wallacea as a source for dispersal and diversification of murine rodents. J. Biogeography 46: 2752–2768, https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13720.Search in Google Scholar
Roycroft, E., Fabre, P.-H., MacDonald, A.J., Moritz, C., Moussalli, A., and Rowe, K.C. (2022). New Guinea uplift opens ecological opportunity across a continent. Curr. Biol. 32: 4215–4224, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.021.Search in Google Scholar PubMed
Quay, W.B. and Tomich, P.Q. (1963). A specialized midventral sebaceous glandular area in Rattus exulans. J. Mammal. 44: 537–542, https://doi.org/10.2307/1377136.Search in Google Scholar
Sokolov, W. and Skurat, L. (1966). A specific midventral gland in gerbils. Nature 211: 544–545, https://doi.org/10.1038/211544a0.Search in Google Scholar PubMed
Supplementary Material
This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2024-0153).
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ecology
- Habitat suitability and potential landscape corridors for South China sika deer (Cervus pseudaxis)
- Environmental and landscape changes drive medium- to large-bodied mammal species composition across an Amazon-Cerrado ecotone amid the deforestation expansion
- Comparison of the assemblage of medium and large mammals in two sites with differences in human access and environmental conditions in the south of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
- Systematic camera trapping survey of mammals in Ngoc Linh Nature Reserve, Quang Nam, Vietnam
- Opportunistic predation of bats by Cerdocyon thous in a Brazilian urban fragment
- First scientific observation of the largest Sahulian rodent, Mallomys istapantap, in the wild
- Ethology
- Latrine ecology of a solitary ungulate, the Japanese serow: female–male communication site rather than territorial marking?
- Biogeography
- First record of Murina walstoni (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) outside Southeast Asia
- Taxonomy/Phylogeny
- A new species of Cryptotis (Eulipotyphla: Soricidae) and introduction to the systematics of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Cryptotis species
- The karyotype along with molecular data of the Iranian lineage of the bicolored shrew Crocidura leucodon (Hermann, 1780) provides evidence of the species level of C. persica Thomas, 1907
- Discovering species-level homonyms in mammals using the Hesperomys database
- Molecular detection and prevalence of Anaplasma and Rickettsia species in rodents captured from wildlife-human interfaces in Iringa and Morogoro regions, Tanzania
- How to spell species epithet for the steppe polecat: eversmanni or eversmanii?
- Evolutionary Biology
- Rediscovery of an extinct species of caviine rodent of the Late Pleistocene after the Last Glacial Maximum in the Pampasic Domain (Argentina)
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ecology
- Habitat suitability and potential landscape corridors for South China sika deer (Cervus pseudaxis)
- Environmental and landscape changes drive medium- to large-bodied mammal species composition across an Amazon-Cerrado ecotone amid the deforestation expansion
- Comparison of the assemblage of medium and large mammals in two sites with differences in human access and environmental conditions in the south of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
- Systematic camera trapping survey of mammals in Ngoc Linh Nature Reserve, Quang Nam, Vietnam
- Opportunistic predation of bats by Cerdocyon thous in a Brazilian urban fragment
- First scientific observation of the largest Sahulian rodent, Mallomys istapantap, in the wild
- Ethology
- Latrine ecology of a solitary ungulate, the Japanese serow: female–male communication site rather than territorial marking?
- Biogeography
- First record of Murina walstoni (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) outside Southeast Asia
- Taxonomy/Phylogeny
- A new species of Cryptotis (Eulipotyphla: Soricidae) and introduction to the systematics of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Cryptotis species
- The karyotype along with molecular data of the Iranian lineage of the bicolored shrew Crocidura leucodon (Hermann, 1780) provides evidence of the species level of C. persica Thomas, 1907
- Discovering species-level homonyms in mammals using the Hesperomys database
- Molecular detection and prevalence of Anaplasma and Rickettsia species in rodents captured from wildlife-human interfaces in Iringa and Morogoro regions, Tanzania
- How to spell species epithet for the steppe polecat: eversmanni or eversmanii?
- Evolutionary Biology
- Rediscovery of an extinct species of caviine rodent of the Late Pleistocene after the Last Glacial Maximum in the Pampasic Domain (Argentina)
