Australasian Journal of Herpetology 42:31-37. Published 25 April 2020. Small, easily overlooked and in decline. Potoroos in Eastern Australia. A formal division of the genus Potorous Desmarest, 1804 (Marsupialia Potoroidae) and the description of a new species from south-east Queensland. LSID URN:LSID:ZOOBANK.ORG:PUB:339C5641-9CA7-41A3-9436-1DADAF52B67B RAYMOND T. HOSER LSID URN:LSID:ZOOBANK.ORG:AUTHOR:F9D74EB5-CFB5-49A0-8C7C-9F993B8504AE 488 Park Road, Park Orchards, Victoria, 3134, Australia. Phone: +61 3 9812 3322 Fax: 9812 3355 E-mail: snakeman (at) snakeman.com.au Received 26 February 2020, Accepted 23 March 2020, Published 25 April 2020.
ABSTRACT Potoroos within the family Potoroidae are small marsupials which were abundant at the time Europeans first came to Australia (White and Stone 1790). They have severely declined in number since. Three main species groups, all currently placed in the genus Potorous Desmarest, 1804 (type species Didelphis tridactyla Kerr, 1792) have been formally described and named, containing one putative species each based on most recently published classifications. One of these, the Long-nosed Potoroo Potorous tridactylus (Kerr, 1792) was recently subdivided into two species, namely P. gilberti (Gould, 1841) from Western Australia and P. tridactylus from eastern Australia, treated as consisting three subspecies, being the nominate form from the Central Coast of New South Wales, P. tridactylus apicalis (Gould, 1851) from Tasmania and P. tridactylus trisulcatus (McCoy, 1865) from Victoria (Frankham et al. 2012). Molecular studies have shown east Australian P. tridactylus to consist of four main divergent clades and so the unnamed one is formally named in this paper as P. waddahyamin sp. nov. based on well-known morphological divergences. Each of the four clades are also formally elevated to full species based on known dates of divergence being 1.32 and 2.45 MYA from nearest common ancestor. Of the three main species groups within the putative genus Potorous two have generic names available being Potorous and Potoroops Matschie, 1916 for the type species Hypsiprymnus platyops Gould, 1844. The third species group does not. As the molecular studies of Westerman et al. (2004) and Frankham et al. (2012) showed genus-level divergences between the groups, the unnamed one is formally named for the first time. The species Potorous longipes Seebeck and Johnston, 1980 is formally placed in the new genus Rossignolius gen. nov.. Keywords: Taxonomy; nomenclature; classification; Potoroo; Marsupials; Potoroidae; Potorous; Potoroops; Hypsiprymnus; platyops; tridactylus; trisulcatus; gilberti; apicalis; longipes; New genus; Rossignolius; new species; waddahyamin
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