Western pebble-mound mouse

The western pebble-mound mouse or ngadji, Pseudomys chapmani, is a burrowing, mound-building rodent of the family Muridae that occurs only in the Pilbara region of northwest Western Australia. D. J. Kitchener described it in 1980 from a specimen collected by J. N. Dunlop in 1979 at Mount Meharry, after earlier animals had been taken for Pseudomys hermannsburgensis; the species honours Andrew Chapman, a biologist at the Western Australian Museum. It has a buff brown pelt that is darker, almost black, on the head, white underparts and a white underside to the paws, and smaller ears, feet and tail than its relative, with feet no longer than 16 millimetres. It lives on pebbly soils in arid tussock and hummock grassland and acacia woodland and scatters a mound of pebbles around its burrows; the air warms faster than the pebbles each morning, so small droplets of dew condense on them. Its populations are scattered and its range is contracting as land use changes.