Faeces were studied during 1 to 3 years for rodents live-trapped in 7 areas of Victoria. Diet changed with season for all 6 species studied. In general the staple diet of Rattus lutreolus was basal stem and young rhizome of monocotyledons, probably sedge, and of R. rattus was fungus. Fungus was a main food item for most species and places, especially in winter. Some was basidiomycete but by far the most, especially for R. rattus on coastal heath, was an underground phycomycete tentatively identified as Endogone incrassata. R. fuscipes ate various foods, mainly seeds, insects, fungus and fibrous plant material, whatever was seasonally abundant. Mus musculus ate mostly insects for most of the year, though it is usually considered granivorous and seed was available in summer. Only in June and July were insects less than half the value of food eaten. Pseudomys novaehollandiae ate many foods and almost no insects, but the sample of mice was too small to allow a general conslusion. P. shortridgei ate grass and fungus in autumn and winter but more variety in spring and summer, including flowers, seeds and insects.

A total of 168 specimens of 38 species of Australian native murid rodents and three species of nonnative rodents were screened electrophoretically at 20 loci. Genetic and phylogenetic relationships among species were assessed by means of Average Linkage Cluster and Wagner Analysis respectively. The major conclusions of the analysis are: the genera Melomys, Leggadina, Zyzomys, Notomys and Rattus ire each monophyletic, at least for the species we had; the genus Pseudomys is largely monophyletic; although it may be paraphyletic with respect to Mastacomys and Leporillus; the genus Pseudomys is nevertheless a genetically diverse group consisting of at least four groups, none of which correspond to the earlier genera Gyomys and Thetomys; the 'Old Endemics', the water rats, and the Uromys- Melomys groups are genetically more similar to each other than any is to Rattus. Within Rattus, the following groupings emerge: R. sordidus, R. colletti and R. villosissimus: R. t. tunneyi and R. t. culmorum; R. l. leucopus and R. l. cooktownensis; R. fuscipes coracius, R. f: assimilis and R. f. greyii.

No abstract

From microscopic examination of faeces found in live-traps, the diets of 21 species of Australian rodents were studied. Results are tabulated for species and subspecies, and for different places of origin throughout Australia, for 1 to 14 rodents of the main species Rattus colletti, R. fuscipes, R. leucopus, R. lutreolus, R. rattus, R. sordidus, R. tunneyi, R. villosissimus, Melomys littoralis, Mesembriomys gouldi, Pseudomys gracilicandatus, P. nanus, Uromys candimaculatus, Zyzomys argurus and Z. woodwardi and their subspecies. The text gives results for 1 or 2 rodents each of Conilurus penicillatus, Mastacomys fuscus, Notomys alexis, Pseudomys delicatulus, P. occidentalis and P. shortridgei. The Rattus spp. were separated into 3 groups by diet; R. tumeyi and R. sordidus ate 80% grass and under 5% insects by volume. R. villosissimus, R. colletti and R. lutreolus ate 20 to 50% grass and 5 to 20% insects; R. rattus may be of that group. R. leucopus and R. fuscipes ate less than 10% grass and 20 to 90% insects. For the last 2 groups seeds were important.

Very little systematic information has been collected on the diets of Australian rodents in arid and semiarid regions. The information that is available is restricted generally to short periods of sampling and small sample sizes. Here we review the diets of 15 extant and one extinct species of Australian desert rodents, and provide new results of dietary analyses for (1) Leggadina forresti, Pseudomys desertorand Rattus villosissimus from the Simpson Desert, south-western Queensland, (2) P. albocinereus and P. bolami from the western goldfields of Western Australia, and (3) Notomys alexis, P. desertor and P. hermannsburgensis from the Tanami Desert, Northern Territory. Overwhelmingly, omnivory is the predominant dietary strategy, with most species (11) taking substantial amounts of invertebrate, seed and green plant material. Of the other five species, four can be considered herbivores and one a granivore. Of the four herbivores, however, one is extinct (Leporillus apicalis), one is restricted to an offshore island (Lep. conditor), while another (P. fieldi) is classified as a herbivore from a diet sample of four individuals only. Similarly, P. occidentalis is classified as a granivore on the basis of dietary sampling of two individuals alone. These findings indicate that omnivory, over and above any other dietary strategy including granivory, is predominant among rodents inhabiting Australian deserts.