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
7161371
Marmosa
(
Marmosa
)
murina
(Linnaeus, 1758)
TYPE MATERIAL AND TYPE LOCALITY:
BMNH
67.4.12.542, the
lectotype
(designated by
Husson, 1978
), consists of a fluid-preserved female specimen from which the skull has been extracted and lost (
Voss et al., 2001
).
Rossi (2005: 95)
thought that
BMNH
67.4.12.541 (a male) was the
lectotype
, citing
Thomas (1892)
as having so designated that specimen, but Thomas merely identified two probable
syntypes
without choosing either as the unique name-bearer. Jenkins and Knutson (1983) also appear to have been unaware of Husson’s
lectotype
designation. The type locality is unknown, but it is often assumed to be
Surinam
(after
Thomas, 1911
).
SYNONYMS:
chloe
Thomas, 1907;
dorsigera
Linnaeus,
17584
;
duidae
Tate, 1931
;
klagesi
J.A. Allen, 1900;
meridionalis
Miranda-Ribeiro, 1936;
moreirae
Miranda-Ribeiro, 1936;
musculus
Cabanis, 1848;
parata
Thomas, 1911
;
roraimae
Tate, 1931
;
tobagi
Thomas, 1911
.
DISTRIBUTION: As currently understood (
Voss et al., 2014
),
Marmosa murina
is known from northwestern
Venezuela
and eastern
Colombia
eastward and southward throughout the Guianas to
Brazil
; in
Brazil
, the species is known from Amazonia (east of the Rio Negro and the Tapajós), the Cerrado, and the Atlantic Forest.
Marmosa murina
is also known from
Tobago
, but not from
Trinidad
.
Rossi (2005
: fig. 56) mapped the joint distribution of
M. murina
and
M. tobagi
, which he regarded as distinct species.
REMARKS: Analyses of cytochrome
b
sequence data (
Faria et al., 2013a
; Voss et al.,
4
For the priority of
murina
Linnaeus, 1758
, over
dorsigera
Linnaeus, 1758, see
Husson (1978: 22)
.
2014) suggest that geographic populations currently recognized as
Marmosa murina
include four strongly supported phylogroups that might reasonably be recognized as subspecies: (1) mainland populations north of the Amazon, for which the oldest available trinomen would be
M.
m. murina
; (2) an insular population on
Tobago
, which could be called
M.
m. tobagi
; (3) populations in southeastern Amazonia (east of the Tapajós and south of the Amazon), for which
M. m. parata
would seem to be the appropriate trinomen; and (4) populations in the Atlantic Forest of southeastern
Brazil
, which could be referred to
M. m. moreirae
. Of these nominal taxa, however, only
tobagi
appears to be morphologically diagnosable from the others (
Rossi, 2005
). The logic of treating
tobagi
as a subspecies of
M. murina
rather than as a valid species was briefly discussed by
Voss et al. (2014)
, whose phylogenetic results implied that this phenotypically divergent insular form is closely related to adjacent mainland populations.