Dasyuromorphia

(Redirected from Marsupial carnivore)

Category: Marsupials

Almost all carnivorous marsupials belong to the order Dasyuromorphia, which includes the quolls, dunnarts, Numbat, Tasmanian Devil, the recently extinct Thylacine, and many others. All have three pairs of roughly equal-sized incisors in the lower jaw, and none have the distinctive fused toes that both the herbivore and omnivore groups have.

There are three families: two contain just a single member; the other, Dasyuridae, includes about 55 species.

Only a handful of marsupial carnivores are not dasyuroids: the marsupial moles are sufficiently different to be accorded an order of their own; and a few species from the generally omnivorous bandicoot group (order Peramelemorphia) and the generally herbivorous kangaroo-possum-wombat group (order Diprotodontia) eat substantial amounts of meat or eggs.

In general, the marsupial carnivores have coped poorly with the massive environmental changes brought about by humans. Partly, this is an inevitable consequence of the carnivore lifestyle. Carnivores of any type need a large population of herbivores or omnivores to prey on, and are very vulnerable to even small changes in the ecosystem. Where a small herbivore can survive in quite a modest area of remnant habitat, a cat-sized carnivore needs hundreds of mouse-sized meals each year, or in other words, a territory large enough to support a breeding population of several thousand herbivores. Habitat destruction and habitat fragmentation are much more serious threats to carnivores than they are to other creatures.

Many of the most successful native carnivores in the modern human-altered environment are birds. It is reasonable to ascribe at least part of this success to their ability to move easily from one small hunting ground to another. Most of the surviving carnivorous mammals are mouse-sized or rat-sized, and depend on insects or other very small creatures.

The introduction of highly efficient placental predators by humans, starting about 5000 years ago with the Dingo and followed more recently by the cat and the Red Fox, has been an environmental disaster in a range of different ways, but none more damaging than the effect it has had on the native carnivores. There are no longer any large native carnivores at all, and none of the remaining medium-sized carnivores are likely to survive long-term without conservation action.

• SUPERORDER AUSTRALIDELPHIA (Australasian marsupials)
• Order Microbiotheria: (Monito del Monte)
• Order Dasyuromorphia
  • Family Thylacinidae (Thylacine extinct)
  • Family Dasyuridae (55 species in 13 genera)
    • Subfamily Dasyurinae: quolls and allies
    • Subfamily Phascogalinae: phascogales and antechinuses
    • Subfamily Sminthopsinae: dunnarts and allies
    • Subfamily Planigalinae: planigales and ningauis
  • Family Myrmecobiidae (Numbat)
• Order Peramelemorphia (21 species: bandicoots and allies)
• Order Notoryctemorphia (2 species of marsupial mole)
• Order Diprotodontia (marsupial herbivores, about 117 species in 11 families.)