The
banded hare-wallaby or
munning (
Lagostrophus fasciatus) is a
marsupial that is currently found on the Islands of
Bernier and Dorre off western
Australia. A small population has recently been established on
Faure Island and it appears to have been successful. It has also been reintroduced to
Wadderin Sanctuary, near Narembeen in the central wheatbelt, in 2013. Evidence suggested that the mernine was the only living member of the
sthenurine subfamily, and a recent osteology-based
phylogeny of
macropodids found that the banded hare-wallaby was indeed a bastion of an ancient lineage, agreeing with other (molecular) appraisals of the evolutionary history of
L. fasciatus. However, the authors analysis did not support the placement of the mernine within Sthenurinae, but suggest it belongs to a
plesiomorphic clade which branched off from other macropodids in the early
Miocene and put forward the new subfamily
Lagostrophinae. Recent analysis of
mtDNA extracted from fossils of the sthenurine
Simosthenurus supports this conclusion. This new subfamily includes the banded hare-wallaby and the fossil genus
Troposodon.
