Rattus exulans (Peale, 1848)

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 652

Rattus exulans (Peale, 1848) . Mammalia in Repts. U.S. Expl. Surv., 8:47.

TYPE LOCALITY: Society Isis, Tahiti Isl (France) .

DISTRIBUTION: E Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sundaic region (incl. Mentawai isls, and islands of Enggano, Nias, and Simeulule), Christmas Isl, Sulawesi, Philippines, Moluccas, Nusa Tenggara (Lesser Sunda Isis), New Guinea Region, two islands off the coast of N and NE Australia (not on mainland), Micronesia, New Zealand, and Polynesia, including Hawaii and Easter Isl. Not recorded from Andaman or Nicobar isls, despite assertion of Wodzicki and Taylor (1984).

SYNONYMS: aentuli, aitape, apicus, basilanus , bocourti , buruensis , calcis , clabatus , concolor , browni echimyoides, ephippiutn, equile, eurous, gawae, hawaiiensis , huegeli, jessook, lassacquerei, leucophaetus , luteiventris , malengiensis, manoquarius, maorium, mayonicus , Togomys melanoderma , meringgit, micronesiensis, negrinus, obscurus, ornatulus, otteni, pantarensis, praecelsus, pullus, querceti, raveni, rennelli, schuitemakeri, solatus, stragulum, suffectus, surdus, tibicen, todayensis, vigoratus, vitiensis, vulcani, wichmanni (see Dieterlen, in Ansell, 1989a; Ellerman, 1961; Laurie and Hill, 1954; Musser, 1970e, 1977a; Musser and Newcomb, 1983; and Taylor et al., 1982).

COMMENTS: Inadvertant human introduction responsible for most of the Pacific insular occurrences (see Roberts, 1991), and possibly for distribution outside of mainland SE Asia where species may have originated ( Musser and Newcomb, 1983).

Rattus exulans has traditionally been included within subgenus Rattus along with R. argentiventer, R. nitidus, R. norvegicus, R. rattus, and others which have, in the past, formed the core of that group (e.g., Ellerman, 1941; Misonne, 1969). Some electrophoretic and chromosomal data supported this allocation ( Raman and Sharma, 1977; Chan, 1977; Chan et al., 1979), but morphological and other biochemical data suggested the species is distant from R. rattus and its close relatives ( Gemmeke and Niethammer, 1984; Medway and Yong, 1976; Pasteur et al., 1982).