Marmosa (Micoureus) paraguayana Tate, 1931

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 : 18

Marmosa (Micoureus) paraguayana Tate, 1931

TYPE MATERIAL AND TYPE LOCALITY: BMNH 25.5.1.15, the holotype by original designation, consists of the skin and skull of an adult male collected at Villarica (25.75° S, 56.43° W), Guairá department, Paraguay.

SYNONYMS: cinerea Temminck, 1824 (preoccupied); travassosi Miranda-Ribeira, 1936.

DISTRIBUTION: Marmosa paraguayana is found in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil (south of

Bahia) and in the contiguous subtropical humid forests of northeastern Argentina (Misiones) and eastern Paraguay (Gardner and Creighton, 2008a: map 33).

REMARKS: The current assumption that Didelphis cinerea Temminck, 1824 (preoccupied by Didelphis cinerea Goldfuss, 1812 ; Gardner and Creighton, 2008a) is a synonym of Marmosa paraguayana merits some skepticism. The lectotype of Temminck’s cinerea (AMNH 845; designated by Avila Pires, 1965) is a very old skin that does not preserve any convincingly diagnostic traits. Moreover, the type locality of cinerea (Morro d’Arara, at 18.10° S, 39.58° W) is in Bahia, where only Marmosa demerarae —externally indistinguishable from M. paraguayana according to Guimarães (2013) —is known to occur. Molecular sequence data from the lectotype of cinerea would help settle the question as to whether this name belongs in the synonymy of M. paraguayana or M. demerarae .