Tlacuatzin Voss and Jansa, 2003

Voss, Robert S., 2022, An Annotated Checklist Of Recent Opossums (Mammalia: Didelphidae), Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2022 (455), pp. 1-77 : 30

Genus Tlacuatzin Voss and Jansa, 2003

TYPE SPECIES: Didelphis (Micoureus) canescens J.A. Allen, 1893 , by original designation.

SYNONYMS: None.

REMARKS: See Voss and Jansa (2009) for an emended generic description. The relationships of Tlacuatzin within the tribe Marmosini have yet to be satisfactorily resolved, although the largest concatenated-gene dataset yet analyzed (Amador and Giannini, 2016) suggests that it is the sister group to Marmosa .

Arcangeli et al. (2018) recognized five species of this Mexican endemic genus based on phylogenetic analyses of sequence data from one mitochondrial gene (cytochrome b) and one nuclear gene (IRBP). Unfortunately, only cytochrome b was taxonomically informative, and taxonomic differences in morphological traits were not convincingly documented. In the absence of compelling evidence for nucleargene divergence, the following taxa are perhaps nothing more than mtDNA haplogroups; alternatively, they might be treated as subspecies. However, until relevant phenotypic analyses or additional genetic analyses are carried out, I list them here as valid species.