Gracilinanus dryas ( Thomas, 1898 )

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 : 43

Gracilinanus dryas ( Thomas, 1898)

TYPE MATERIAL AND TYPE LOCALITY: BMNH 98.5 .15.2, the holotype by original designation, consists of the skin and skull of an adult male collected at “Culata” (= Páramo de la Culata in the Cordillera de Mérida: ca. 8.75° N, 71.08° W; 4000 m), Mérida state, Venezuela .

SYNONYMS: None.

DISTRIBUTION: Gracilinanus dryas has been reported from high elevations (> 2200 m) in the Cordillera de Mérida and the Cordillera de Trujillo of western Venezuela and in the Cordillera Oriental (eastern Andes) of Colombia (Creighton and Gardner, 2008 b: map 16).

REMARKS: This species has received no revisionary attention and is not represented in any published phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequence data. Although unpublished analyses of cytochrome b sequences (cited by Díaz-Nieto et al., 2016a) failed to resolve Gracilinanus dryas and G. marica as reciprocally monophyletic taxa, no careful review of relevant voucher identifications has yet been undertaken. Types and topotypes of these taxa from the Cordillera de Mérida certainly have the morphological aspect of distinct species (as noted by Thomas, 1898), so additional research is needed to resolve this apparent discrepancy. Tate (1933: 203) claimed that the auditory bullae of G. dryas lack “processes,” but well-developed anteromedial processes of the alisphenoid tympanic wing are present in all the specimens I have examined for this trait (N = 10), including the holotype.