Dromiciops mondaca
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| Dromiciops mondaca | ||||||||||||
| D'Elía , Hurtado , D'Anatro , 2016 |
Dromiciops mondaca ( Spanish: Mondaca’s monito del monte ) is a small, mouse-like species of South American marsupial. The species was newly described in April 2016and separated from the Chiloé opossum ( Dromiciops gliroides ) due to morphological and molecular biological differences. The cytochrome b genes of the mitochondrial DNA of Dromiciops mondaca and the Chiloé opossum differ by 8.2%. The species epithet mondaca honors Fredy Mondaca, who was in charge of the mammal collection of the Universidad Austral de Chile forover two decades. Dromiciops mondaca is known so far only from two small, closely spaced areas in the coastal cordillera of the Región de Los Ríos in southern Chile.
features
The holotype of Dromiciops mondaca has a total length of 20 cm, 11 cm of which is on the tail. The rear foot is 19 mm long, the ears 16 mm. The animal weighs 15 g, has a brown fur on the back with a central dark brown zone that extends from the top of the head to the hips, and a whitish belly. The hair of the peritoneum has dark gray bases. The three Dromiciops species differ mainly in terms of their skull morphology. Dromiciops mondaca has a long, narrow, tapering snout, a forehead indented in the middle and a rounded skull. Seen from the side, the skull looks rounded, the edges of the muzzle are concave when seen from above. The upper canines are twice as long as the incisors.
Dromiciops mondaca is nocturnal, spends the day in nests that resemble bird's nests, and at low ambient temperatures falls into a topor , a state of rest with lowered body temperature, in which the energy requirement is severely restricted.
literature
- Guillermo D'Elía, Natalí Hurtado, Alejandro D'Anatro. Alpha taxonomy of Dromiciops (Microbiotheriidae) with the description of 2 new species of monito del monte. Journal of Mammalogy. April 2016. DOI: 10.1093 / jmammal / gyw068