Gilbert's potoroo

Appearance

Gilbert's potoroo is a small species of Potorous with a fur colour that is rufous brown across the upper side and light grey beneath. Its body has large amounts of fur, that helps with insulation, and its fur ranges between brown and grey, the colour fading on its belly. This potoroo has a long, thin snout curving downward that it uses to smell its surroundings. This trait is common in all potoroo species.

Adult females range in weight from 708–1,205 g (25.0–42.5 oz) (among them pouch young where present), whereas adult males range in weight from 845–1,200 g (29.8–42.3 oz).

Range and habitat

Gilbert's potoroo was once found in a large distribution range across south-west Australia, but seems to have been locally restricted. Sites at Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin have produced subfossil remains that show the range extended to the west of the King George Sound region at some point in recent history. The physical and anecdotal ranges included the areas around King George Sound and near the Margaret River, but the native range became reduced to the Mount Gardner headland at Two Peoples Bay (hence the naming of this population as the Mt Gardner population).

The only naturally located population is found in Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve in Western Australia, where they co-exist with quokkas (Setonix brachyurus), but in 2015, a bushfire destroyed 90% of their habitat. Small populations are being established at Bald Island, off Albany, and more recently on Middle Island, off Esperance, all on the southern coast of Western Australia.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

Study of the species' diet is limited to the relict population discovered at Two Peoples Bay and is found to be similar to that of P. Tridactylus. It may also consume fleshy fruits, as seeds have been found in the scat, but how important this is to its diet is unknown.

As with many of the potoroine species, the primary type of fungus consumed is hypogeous, with the above-ground fruiting bodies of epigeous fungi forming only a minor part of their diet. The main breeding period is thought to be November–December, with similar breeding patterns to those of the long-nosed potoroo. Scientists have tried to breed them in captivity, but recent attempts have been unsuccessful, citing diet, incompatibility, and age as possible factors that influenced the lack of reproduction.

In crisis

Gilbert's potoroo or ngilkat is Australia's most endangered marsupial, the rarest marsupial in the world, and one of the world's rarest critically endangered mammals, found in south-western Western Australia. It was thought to be extinct for much of the 20th century, having not been spotted for around a century, until its rediscovery in 1994. Numbers have increased in recent years, and as of December 2018, the entire population was estimated to comprise at least 100 individuals, with 10 on Middle Island, 70 on Bald Island, 20 at Waychinicup National Park, and two at Two Peoples Bay (also known as the Mt Gardner population).

Gilbert's potoroo is one of Australia's most critically endangered mammals, and is the rarest marsupial in the world, but its population has increased slightly in recent years owing to translocations. The wild population at Mt Gardner was 30 in 2005, but by 2015 had reduced to 15 (this was after some animals had been translocated).

Gilbert's potoroo is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Gilbert's potoroo, Wikidata item Q210073. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.