Caluromys (Caluromys) philander (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 : 6

Caluromys (Caluromys) philander

(Linnaeus, 1758)

TYPE MATERIAL AND TYPE LOCALITY: BMNH 67.4.12.414, the holotype by monotypy, consists of the fluid-preserved carcass and extracted skull of an adult female ( Thomas, 1892; Jenkins and Knutson, 1983). The type locality is unknown, but it is often assumed to be Surinam (after Thomas, 1911).

SYNONYMS: affinis Wagner, 1842; cajopolin Müller, 1776; cayopollin Schreber, 1777; cayopollin Kerr, 1792; dichurus Wagner, 1842; flavescens Brongniart, 1792; leucurus Thomas, 1904; trinitatis Thomas, 1894; venezuelae Thomas, 1903.

DISTRIBUTION: Caluromys philander occurs in lowland rainforest and dry forests in north-central and eastern Venezuela; the Guianas; northern, central, and southeastern Brazil; and eastern Bolivia ( Gardner, 2008: map 2).

REMARKS: As currently recognized, Caluromys philander is unrevised and may represent a species complex, but published results are neither sufficient to distinguish valid taxa among the synonyms listed above nor among geographic populations currently lacking available names. Although López-Fuster et al. (2008) suggested that populations in Trinidad and northern Venezuela should be recognized as a distinct species, this inference was not supported by phylogenetic analyses of mtDNA sequence data reported by Voss et al. (2019). By contrast, the latter authors discovered that mtDNA sequences from eastern Bolivia were highly divergent from sequences obtained elsewhere in the known range of C. philander ; unfortunately, voucher material from eastern Bolivia has yet to be examined for possibly diagnostic morphological traits.