What Rat is That?

This site provides phylogenetic tools for the identification of rats (Rattusspp.) from the region of southeast Asia and the Pacific. These species are often difficult to identify using morphological characters. We have operationally defined species as phylogenetic clades on a tree build using sequences from three mitochondrial DNA regions. Users identify unknown samples by submitting a DNA sequence, which is then incorporated into a phylogenetic analysis. Theidentity of the unknown sequence can then be inferred from its placement in the phylogenetic tree.

The identifications made by this site are operational and the whole system, including the reference sequence alignments, is a work in progress.


Contact:
Shane Lavery
Bioinformatics Institute and School of Biological Sciences
University of Auckland
s.lavery{at}auckland.ac.nz

Illustration courtesy of Tim Mackrell,
University of Auckland,
Department of Anthropology