AnAge entry for Antechinus stuartii
Classification (HAGRID: 02454)
- Taxonomy
-
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia (Taxon entry)
Order: Dasyuromorphia
Family: Dasyuridae
Genus: Antechinus
- Species
- Antechinus stuartii
- Common name
- Brown antechinus
Lifespan, ageing, and relevant traits
- Maximum longevity
- 5.4 years (captivity)
- Source
- ref. 671
- Sample size
- Small
- Data quality
- Acceptable
- Observations
These are very intriguing animals from a gerontological perspective. This marsupial mouse shows Big Bang reproduction: males in the wild die during mating season of sexual stress marked by weight loss, regression of the sexual organs, and increased susceptibility to various diseases. Castration extends longevity [0023]. Isolated captive males can live for more than one year, even though they exhibit the same features of wild animals during mating season, such as weight loss, and they become sterile afterwards [0469]. One captive specimen lived for 5.4 years [0671].
Life history traits (averages)
- Female sexual maturity
- 285 days
- Male sexual maturity
- 285 days
- Gestation
- 30 days
- Weaning
- 106 days
- Litter size
- 7 (viviparous)
- Litters per year
- 1
- Inter-litter interval
- 365 days
- Weight at birth
- 0.016 g
- Weight at weaning
- 16 g
- Adult weight
- 27.5 g
- Postnatal growth rate
- Maximum longevity residual
- 66%
Metabolism
- Typical body temperature
- 308ºK or 35.1ºC or 95.2ºF
- Basal metabolic rate
- 0.1890 W
- Body mass
- 25.0 g
- Metabolic rate per body mass
- 0.007560 W/g
References
- [0978] Jones et al. (2009), PanTHERIA: a species-level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals
- [0481] Austad (2005), Diverse aging rates in metazoans: targets for functional genomics (PubMed)
- [0671] Richard Weigl (2005), Longevity of Mammals in Captivity; from the Living Collections of the World
- [0036] Savage et al. (2004), The predominance of quarter-power scaling in biology
- [0420] White and Seymour (2003), Mammalian basal metabolic rate is proportional to body mass2/3 (PubMed)
- [0730] Smith et al. (2003), Body mass of late Quaternary mammals
- [0522] Fisher et al. (2001), The ecological basis of life history variation in marsupials
- [0434] Ronald Nowak (1999), Walker's Mammals of the World
- [0023] Roger Gosden (1996), Cheating Time
- [0213] Kortner and Geiser (1995), Body temperature rhythms and activity in reproductive Antechinus (Marsupialia) (PubMed)
- [0014] Leonard Hayflick (1994), How and Why We Age
- [0455] Virginia Hayssen et al. (1993), Asdell's Patterns of Mammalian Reproduction: A Compendium of Species-Specific Data
- [0002] Caleb Finch (1990), Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome
- [0469] Diamond (1982), Big-bang reproduction and ageing in male marsupial mice (PubMed)
- [0733] Bradley et al. (1980), Stress and mortality in a small marsupial (Antechinus stuartii, Macleay) (PubMed)
External Resources
- Integrated Taxonomic Information System
- ITIS 552600
- Animal Diversity Web
- ADW account
- Encyclopaedia of Life
- Search EOL
- NCBI Taxonomy
- Taxonomy ID 9283
- Entrez
- Search all databases
- Ageing Literature
- Search Google Scholar or Search PubMed
- Images
- Google Image search
- Internet
- Search Google