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Spectacled Hare-wallaby
 
 
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The Spectacled Hare-wallaby (Lagorchestes conspicillatus) is a species of macropod
Macropod

Macropods are marsupials belonging to the family Macropodidae, which includes kangaroos, wallaby, tree-kangaroos, pademelons, and several others....
 found in Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
. A small sub-population is found on Barrow Island, the mainland type is widespread, though in decline, across northern regions of the country.

ecies of Lagorchestes
Lagorchestes

Lagorchestes is a genus containing all but one of the species referred to as hare-wallabies. It has four species, two of which are extinct:...
, Hare-wallaby, small members of the Macropodidae family. The Spectacled Hare-wallaby is found across northern Australia in tropical tussock
Tussock

Tussock may refer to:Plants and ecology *Bunch grass*New Zealand tussock grasslands*Nassella trichotoma *Tussock *Tussock grassland...
 or spinifex
Spinifex

Spinifex may refer to:* Spinifex , a genus of grass which is indigenous to the coastal areas of Australasia and Indonesia.* Spinifex, Triodia , a hummock grass of arid Australia, covering twenty per cent of the Australian continent....
 habitats.






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The Spectacled Hare-wallaby (Lagorchestes conspicillatus) is a species of macropod
Macropod

Macropods are marsupials belonging to the family Macropodidae, which includes kangaroos, wallaby, tree-kangaroos, pademelons, and several others....
 found in Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
. A small sub-population is found on Barrow Island, the mainland type is widespread, though in decline, across northern regions of the country.

Description

A species of Lagorchestes
Lagorchestes

Lagorchestes is a genus containing all but one of the species referred to as hare-wallabies. It has four species, two of which are extinct:...
, Hare-wallaby, small members of the Macropodidae family. The Spectacled Hare-wallaby is found across northern Australia in tropical tussock
Tussock

Tussock may refer to:Plants and ecology *Bunch grass*New Zealand tussock grasslands*Nassella trichotoma *Tussock *Tussock grassland...
 or spinifex
Spinifex

Spinifex may refer to:* Spinifex , a genus of grass which is indigenous to the coastal areas of Australasia and Indonesia.* Spinifex, Triodia , a hummock grass of arid Australia, covering twenty per cent of the Australian continent....
 habitats. It can be found from Queensland
Queensland

Queensland is a States and territories of Australia of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory to the west, South Australia to the south-west and New South Wales to the south....
 to Western Australia
Western Australia

Western Australia is a States and territories of Australia occupying the entire western third of the Australia . The nation's largest state and the second largest subnational entity in the world, it has 2.1 million inhabitants , 85% of whom live in the south-west corner of the state....
. It is a solitary, nocturnal herbivore, and is considerably larger than its relatives. It is coloured grey-brown with golden tips and an orange circle around its eye, from which it gets its name. It builds its nests among the tough vegetation. When disturbed it hops off in a zigzag manner. The young are produced singly at any time of the year and become sexually mature at about a year old.

Naming and taxonomy

The species was first described by John Gould
John Gould

John Gould was an England ornithologist. The Gould League in Australia was named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" was pivotal in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, though they are barely mentioned in Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species....
, naming this hare-wallaby as Lagorchestes conspicillata, and provided an illustraion that was included in The Mammals of Australia (Volume II) as plate 59. A separate description, Lagorchestes leichardti, was included in the same work as Pl. 58. This is now regarded as a subpopulation of the same species, which is sometimes described as a subspecies.

Threat and status

The species was reviewed on the Red List (2008) as having the conservation status Least Concern. The subspecies L. conspicillatus conspicillatus is restricted to Barrow Island, Western Australia, but was once found throughout the Montebello Islands
Montebello Islands

The Montebello Islands are an archipelago of around 174 small islands located off the Pilbara region of Western Australia coast of North West Australia....
. Predation by introduced species
Introduced species

A species is defined as introduced in a certain geographical area, if that area is outside the species' indigenous distributional range, and the species has arrived there by human activity....
 and development on the island have led to a vulnerable status. L. conspicillatus leichardti, the mainland subspecies, was once regarded as a near-threatened status. The population of the species is in decline, largely due to reduction of habitat through land clearing. Concern also exists regarding the disappearance from arid parts of its far northern range. Reintroduction to former habitats has been proposed, following the related Western Shield
Western Shield

Western Shield, managed by Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation , is a nature conservation program, safeguarding Western Australia's native animals and rescuing them from extinction....
 projects.

Fossil record

A Spectacled Hare-wallaby fossil was discovered in Queensland dating up to 11,000 years ago from the early Holocene
Holocene

The Holocene is a geological Epoch which began approximately 11,700 years ago . According to traditional geological thinking, the Holocene continues to the present....
.

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