Potoroo is a common name for species of Potorous, a genus of smaller marsupials. They are allied to the Macropodiformes, the suborder of kangaroo, wallaby, and other rat-kangaroo genera. All three extant species are threatened by ecological changes since the colonisation of Australia, especially the long-footed potoroo Potorous longipes (endangered) and P. gilbertii (critically endangered). The broad-faced potoroo P. platyops disappeared after its first description in the 19th century. The main threats are predation by introduced species (especially foxes) and habitat loss.
Potoroos were formerly very common in Australia, and early settlers reported them as being significant pests to their crops.
Gilbert's potoroo was first described in the West in 1840 by naturalist John Gilbert. It was then thought to have become extinct until being rediscovered in 1994 at the Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve (near Albany) in Western Australia. Conservation efforts have grown an initial wild population of 30-40 to over 100.[3] All species of Potorous are well within the "critical weight range" for mammals in Australia, those weighing from 35 to 4200 g whose trajectory was toward decline or extinction during British settlement.[4]
A genus of smaller macropodids, it gives its name to the family Potoroidae. The species of Potorous have been greatly impacted or become extinct since their first descriptions, which has presented difficulties in determining the diversity of the genus. The number of species described by 1888 was five, when a revision by Oldfield Thomas merged this to three species.[5][6]
The genus was named Potorous by Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest in 1804, an epithet that was replaced by Illiger with the name Hypsiprymnus and cited by subsequent authors despite the protest of Desmarest. Oldfield Thomas saw no basis for this substitution and recognised Potorous in 1888.[6]
The genus is allied with the extant Bettongia and Aepyprymnus, which along with the family Hypsiprymnodontidae, are informally grouped as the 'rat-kangaroos' of the suborder Macropodiformes.