Rattus villosissimus (Waite, 1898). Proc. R. Soc. Victoria, 10:125. TYPE LOCALITY: Australia, Queensland, "from probably the vicinity of Goonhaghooheeny Billabong, Cooper Creek" (see Mahoney and Richardson, 1988). DISTRIBUTION: Australia; broad inland range from NW Western Australia through Northern Territory into most of Queensland and N South Australia and N New South Wales (see map in Watts and Aslin, 1981:245). SYNONYMS: longipilis (Gould, 1854, not Waterhouse, 1837), profusus. COMMENTS: Geographic range is allopatric to the coastal R. sordidus in Queensland and R. colletti in Northern Territory (see map in Taylor and Horner, 1973:72). The three species are closely related; villosissimus was treated as a subspecies of R. sordidus by Taylor and Horner (1973), but is considered genically closer to colletti by Baverstock et al. (1983a, 1986). See accounts of sordidus and colletti. Analyses of electrophoretic data by Gemmeke and Niethammer (1984) indicated R. villosissimus to be greatly separated from R. argentiventer, R. exulans, R. norvegicus, and R. tiomanicus, and closer to species of Bandicota and Maxomys.

{"references": ["Mahoney, J. A., and B. J. Richardson. 1988. Muridae. Pp. 154 - 192, in Zoological catalogue of Australia. Mammalia (J. L. Bannister, et. al.). Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 5: 1 - 274.", "Watts, C. H. S., and H. J. Aslin. 1981. The rodents of Australia. Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 321 pp.", "Taylor, J. M., and B. E. Horner. 1973. Results of the Archbold Expeditions. No. 98. Systematics of native Australian Rattus (Rodentia, Muridae). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 150: 1 - 130.", "Baverstock, P. R., M. Gelder, and A. Jahnke. 1983 a. Chromosome evolution in Australian Rattus- - G-banding and hybrid meiosis. Genetica, 60: 93 - 103.", "Baverstock, P. R., M. Adams, and C. H. S. Watts. 1986. Biochemical differentiation among karyotypic forms of Australian Rattus. Genetica, 71: 11 - 22.", "Gemmeke, H., and J. Niethammer. 1984. Zur Taxonomie der Gattung Rattus (Rodentia, Muridae). Zeitschrift fur Saugetierkunde, 49: 104 - 116."]}

Published as part of Guy G. Musser & 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 on page 662, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7353098