Tammar Wallaby - Taxonomy and Classification

Taxonomy and Classification

The tammar wallaby was seen in the Houtman Abrolhos off Western Australia by survivors of the 1628 Batavia shipwreck, and recorded by François Pelsaert in his 1629 Ongeluckige Voyagie. It was first described in 1817 by the French naturalist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest, who gave it the name eugenii based on where it was found; an island he knew as Ile Eugene in the Nuyts Archipelago off South Australia which is now known as St Peter Island. The island's French name was given in honour of Eugene Hamelin, commander of the ship Naturaliste; whose name is now the specific name of the tammar. The common name of the animal is derived from the thickets of the shrub locally known as tamma (Allocasuarina campestris) that sheltered it in Western Australia. The tammar is classified together with the kangaroos, wallaroos and several species of wallaby in the genus Macropus, and in the subgenus Notomacropus with the other wallabies, all of which have a facial stripe.

Fossil evidence of the tammar wallaby exists from the late Pleistocene era—remains were found in the Naracoorte Caves. The mainland and island dwelling tammars split from each other 7,000–15,000 years ago, while the South Australian and Western Australian animals diverged around 50,000 years ago. The tammar wallabies on Flinders Island had greyer coats and thinner heads than the Kangaroo Island tammars, which are larger than the East and West Wallabi Islands animals. The island tammars were once thought to be a separate species from the mainland population. A 1991 examination of tammar skulls from different parts of the species' range, found that populations can be divided into three distinct groups; one group made of populations from mainland Western Australia, East and West Wallabi Islands, Garden Island and Middle Island; a second group comprising populations from Flinders Island, 19th century mainland Southern Australia and New Zealand; and a third group consisting solely of the Kangaroo Island population. The Western Australia Department of Environment and Conservation lists these populations as subspecies; M. e. derbianus, M. e. eugenii and M. e. decres respectively.