Philander andersoni (Osgood, 1913)

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 : 37-38

Philander andersoni (Osgood, 1913)

TYPE MATERIAL AND TYPE LOCALITY: FMNH 19655, the holotype by original designation, consists of the skin and skull of an adult male collected at Yurimaguas (5.90° S, 76.08° W), Loreto department, Peru.

SYNONYMS: None.

DISTRIBUTION: Philander andersoni is found in northeastern Peru, eastern Ecuador, southeastern Colombia, southern Venezuela, and northwestern Brazil (north of the Amazon and west of the Rio Negro. Patton and da Silva’s (2008) range map approximates this distribution but includes localities in east-central Peru (Junín and Ayacucho) that were based on specimens of P. nigratus , a distinct species (see Remarks).

REMARKS: Philander andersoni and P. mcilhennyi resemble one another and are distinguished from other congeners by having clear (ungrizzled) blackish middorsal fur. Although Hershkovitz (1997) regarded mcilhennyi as a subspecies of M. andersoni, Patton and da Silva (2008) treated these taxa as valid species that were said to differ in several external morphological characters. Phylogenetic analyses of multilocus sequence data indicate that P. andersoni and P. mcilhennyi are not sister species (Voss et al., 2018). Nevertheless, examination of large series of specimens suggests that morphological diagnosis is problematic ( Voss et al., 2019). Philander nigratus , treated as a synonym of P. andersoni by Patton and da Silva (2008), was subsequently revalidated by Voss and Giarla (2020b).