Occurrence of The Marsupial Mole (Notoryctes typhlops) Remains in The Faecal Pellets of Cats, Foxes and Dingoes in The Tanami Desert, N.T.

Abstract

Little ecological information has been collected on the Marsupial Mole, Notoryctes typhlops, since its discovery in 1888. The only field data published on the species this century has resulted from opportunistic encounters with the animal (Johnson and Walton 1989), and no reliable methods for capturing it or monitoring its abundance and distribution have been developed. In 1920 a second species of Marsupial Mole, Notorcytes caurinus, was described from specimens collected in north-western Australia. The distributions of the two species have not been clearly differentiated however, and the two species are often regarded as synonymous (e.g. Johnson 1995). In this paper the potential for a second species was disregarded and reference is made only to N. typhlops due to the proximity of the study sites to the location of recent records of this species.