Dusky antechinus
species of mammal
The dusky antechinus (Antechinus swainsonii), also known as Swainson's antechinus or the dusky marsupial mouse, is a species of small marsupial carnivore, a member of the family Dasyuridae. It is found in Australia.
Taxonomy
The dusky antechinus was described by English naturalist George Robert Waterhouse in 1840, the second antechinus to be described. It was named in honour of the zoologist and artist William Swainson, with the holotype likely being a specimen collected by Swainson's correspondent Thomas Lempriere from the Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania.
There are three subspecies:
A. s. swainsonii, found in Tasmania;
A. s. insulanus, found in the Grampians National Park, Victoria;
A. s. mimetes, found from south-eastern Queensland through eastern New South Wales to south-western Victoria.
Description
The dusky antechinus is the largest antechinus. The largest and darkest fur Dusky Antechinus occur in higher altitudes.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dusky antechinus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.