Marmosa (Marmosa) murina (Linnaeus, 1758)

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 : 14

Marmosa (Marmosa) murina (Linnaeus, 1758)

TYPE MATERIAL AND TYPE LOCALITY: BMNH 67.4.12.542, the lectotype (designated by Husson, 1978), consists of a fluid-preserved female specimen from which the skull has been extracted and lost ( Voss et al., 2001). Rossi (2005: 95) thought that BMNH 67.4.12.541 (a male) was the lectotype, citing Thomas (1892) as having so designated that specimen, but Thomas merely identified two probable syntypes without choosing either as the unique name-bearer. Jenkins and Knutson (1983) also appear to have been unaware of Husson’s lectotype designation. The type locality is unknown, but it is often assumed to be Surinam (after Thomas, 1911).

SYNONYMS: chloe Thomas, 1907; dorsigera Linnaeus, 17584; duidae Tate, 1931; klagesi J.A. Allen, 1900; meridionalis Miranda-Ribeiro, 1936; moreirae Miranda-Ribeiro, 1936; musculus Cabanis, 1848; parata Thomas, 1911; roraimae Tate, 1931; tobagi Thomas, 1911 .

DISTRIBUTION: As currently understood ( Voss et al., 2014), Marmosa murina is known from northwestern Venezuela and eastern Colombia eastward and southward throughout the Guianas to Brazil; in Brazil, the species is known from Amazonia (east of the Rio Negro and the Tapajós), the Cerrado, and the Atlantic Forest. Marmosa murina is also known from Tobago, but not from Trinidad. Rossi (2005: fig. 56) mapped the joint distribution of M. murina and M. tobagi , which he regarded as distinct species.

REMARKS: Analyses of cytochrome b sequence data ( Faria et al., 2013a; Voss et al.,

4 For the priority of murina Linnaeus, 1758 , over dorsigera

Linnaeus, 1758, see Husson (1978: 22).

2014) suggest that geographic populations currently recognized as Marmosa murina include four strongly supported phylogroups that might reasonably be recognized as subspecies: (1) mainland populations north of the Amazon, for which the oldest available trinomen would be M. m. murina ; (2) an insular population on Tobago, which could be called M. m. tobagi ; (3) populations in southeastern Amazonia (east of the Tapajós and south of the Amazon), for which M. m. parata would seem to be the appropriate trinomen; and (4) populations in the Atlantic Forest of southeastern Brazil, which could be referred to M. m. moreirae. Of these nominal taxa, however, only tobagi appears to be morphologically diagnosable from the others ( Rossi, 2005). The logic of treating tobagi as a subspecies of M. murina rather than as a valid species was briefly discussed by Voss et al. (2014), whose phylogenetic results implied that this phenotypically divergent insular form is closely related to adjacent mainland populations.