An Annotated Checklist Of Recent Opossums (Mammalia: Didelphidae)
Author
Voss, Robert S.
text
Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History
2022
2022-04-04
2022
455
1
77
https://bioone.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-museum-of-natural-history/volume-455/issue-1/0003-0090.455.1.1/An-Annotated-Checklist-of-Recent-Opossums-Mammalia-Didelphidae/10.1206/0003-0090.455.1.1.full
journal article
10.1206/0003-0090.455.1.1
0003-0090
Marmosops
(
Marmosops
)
caucae
(Thomas, 1900)
TYPE MATERIAL AND TYPE LOCALITY:
BMNH
99.9.6.51, the
holotype
by original designation, consists of the skin and skull of an old adult male that was probably collected at about
1000 m
on the Río Cauquita near Cali (ca.
3.45° N
,
76.52° W
),
Valle del Cauca department
,
Colombia
.
14
SYNONYMS:
celicae
Anthony, 1922;
madescens
Osgood, 1913;
neblina
Gardner, 1990
;
oroensis
Anthony, 1922;
perfuscus
Thomas, 1924;
purui
Miller, 1913;
sobrinus
Thomas, 1913
;
ucayaliensis
Tate, 1931
).
DISTRIBUTION: As currently recognized (see below),
Marmosops caucae
ranges from eastern
Panama
southward along the Andes to northern
Peru
, and it also occurs in the adjacent western Amazonian lowlands as far south as
Madre de Dios
(in southeastern
Peru
); a possibly isolated population occurs on Cerro de la Neblina in southern
Venezuela
. No published range map accurately illustrates the distribution of this species (or species complex), although
Díaz-Nieto et al. (2016b)
mapped the localities of numerous sequenced specimens.
REMARKS: As recognized herein,
Marmosops caucae
includes
M. neblina
—recognized as a valid species by Gardner and Creighton (2008b)—as well as most of the nominal taxa that those authors referred to
M. impavidus
(Tschudi, 1845)
, a nomen dubium as explained by
Tate (1933: 25)
and
Díaz-Nieto et al. (2016b: 931)
. Phylogenetic analyses of cytochrome
b
sequence data reported by
Díaz-Nieto et al. (2016b)
revealed that
M. caucae
includes at least three robustly supported haplogroups (including the haplogroup they called
ucayaliensis
), but none is known to be morphologically diagnosable. The nominal taxon
purui
Miller, 1913, was listed as a synonym of
M. noctivagus
by Voss and Jansa (2009), but the craniodental traits of the
holotype
and
paratype
(including smooth interorbital margins and a complete anterior cingu-
14
See
Tate (1933: 178)
for comments on this problematic locality.
lum on M3) suggest that it belongs to the
M. caucae
complex.