Marmosops carri
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| Marmosops carri | ||||||||||||
| ( Allen & Chapman , 1897) |
Marmosops carri is a mammal of the family of opossums (Didelphidae). It was long assumed that the animals were endemic to Trinidad and Tobago , until Handley and Gordon noticed in 1979 that some slim-pouch rats from mountainous regions of northern Venezuela could not be distinguished morphologically from those from Trinidad and Tobago. As a result, the known range of the species was extended to the coastal mountains ( Cordillera de la Costa ) of northern Venezuela, as well as the Cordillera de Trujillo in the north of the Cordillera de Mérida .
description
The animals reach a head trunk length of 12.6 to 15.5 cm, have a 15.2 to 18.3 cm long tail and reach a weight of 41 to 85 g. Males are usually larger than females. The fur on the back is gray-brown and the hair in the middle of the back is 7 to 9 mm long. The sides of the body are sometimes a little lighter. The fur on the underside from chin to belly is whitish on the surface. In most specimens, however, the hair bases are gray. The front paws are light on their upper side. The tail is longer than the length of the head and only clearly two-colored with a dark upper and a light underside. in some specimens the tip of the tail is also a little lighter. Females have seven teats in the pouch, three on each side and one in the middle.
Compared to the very similar dark slender rat ( Marmosops fuscatus ) that occurs in Colombia and Venezuela , Marmosops carri is a bit lighter and significantly larger.
habitat
Marmosops carri occurs on Trinidad in lowland rainforests above sea level and in Venezuela in mountain rainforests at an altitude of 1000 to 2300 meters and lives in parts of its distribution area sympathetically with the related species Marmosops ojastii .
Systematics
The species was first scientifically described by Allen and Chapman in 1897 under the name Thylamys carri , at that time assigned to the fat- tailed pouch rats ( Thylamys ). Gardner synonymized the species in 1993 with the dark slender rat ( Marmosops fuscatus ). In a work on the mammalian fauna of South America published in 2008, he granted the form the status of a subspecies ( Marmosops fuscatus carri ), a view that is adopted in the 2015 handbook of the Mammals of the World marsupials . A year later, Marmosops carri became an independent species in a revision of the slender- pouched rat subgenus Sciophanes .
supporting documents
- ↑ Handley, CO, Jr., and LK Gordon. 1979. New species of mammals from northern South America: mouse opossums, genus Marmosa Gray . In JF Eisenberg (editor), Vertebrate ecology in the northern Neotropics: 65-72. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
- ↑ a b c d e Juan F. Díaz-Nieto, Robert S. Voss: A Revision of the Didelphid Marsupial Genus Marmosops, Part 1. Species of the Subgenus Sciophanes. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History Number 402: 1-70. 2016, doi: 10.1206 / 0003-0090-402.1.1 . Pages 28–34.
- ↑ Allen, JA, and FM Chapman. 1897. On a second collection of mammals from the island of Trinidad, with descriptions of new species and a note on some mammals from the island of Dominica, WI Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 9 (2): 13-30.
- ↑ D. Astúa: Family Didelphidae (Opossums) In: Don E. Wilson & Russell A. Mittermeier (Eds.): Handbook of the Mammals of the World : Monotremes and Marsupials: Volume 5. Lynx Edicions Barcelona, 2015. ISBN 978- 84-96553-99-6 : p. 181