Uromys (Godthelp, 1999)

Cramb, Jonathan, Hocknull, Scott A. & Price, Gilbert J., 2020, Fossil Uromys (Rodentia: Murinae) from Central Queensland, with a Description of a New Middle Pleistocene Species, Records of the Australian Museum (Rec. Aust. Mus.) 72 (5), pp. 175-191 : 188

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.3853/j.2201-4349.72.2020.1731

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7946323

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/2750B75B-FFDF-FFB7-FC18-882377F2F9D3

treatment provided by

Felipe

scientific name

Uromys
status

 

Palaeoecology of Uromys View in CoL View at ENA

Living species of Uromys are semiarboreal omnivores (Breed & Ford, 2007). The ability to access food resources in the canopy (e.g., fruits, before they fall to the forest floor) has been suggested as a competitive advantage for species of Uromys ( Rader & Krockenberger, 2006) ; this probably played a role in resource partitioning in the species-rich Mount Etna Middle Pleistocene rainforest. The larger size of most species ( U. hadrourus and U. porculus being exceptions) allows them to utilize food resources that are inaccessible to smaller rodents. For example, large species of Uromys in north Queensland are known to gnaw through the hard, thick shells of coconuts (Watts & Aslin, 1981) and are also infamous for opening metal traps (Elliot traps) to steal bait or prey upon smaller mammals (Laurance et al., 1993; Eric Vanderduys, pers. comm. January 2020). Furthermore, there is evidence that smaller murines actively avoid large species of Uromys (Leung, 2008) suggesting that an “ecology of fear” (Brown et al., 1999) may have a role in structuring small mammal assemblages, at least on a local scale. Uromys aplini is the largest murine in the Mount Etna deposits, and may have behaved much like its extant relatives, robbing large seeds, consuming fruits and insects, and generally terrorizing the smaller vertebrates.

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Mammalia

Order

Rodentia

Family

Muridae

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