Marmosops (Marmosops) caucae, J. A. Allen, 1900

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 : 46

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.