Didelphis 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 : 33

Genus Didelphis Linnaeus, 1758

TYPE SPECIES: Didelphis marsupialis Linnaeus, 1758 , by subsequent designation ( Thomas, 1888a).

SYNONYMS: Leucodidelphis Ihering, 1914 ; Opossum Schmid, 1818 ; Sarigua Muirhead, 1819 .

REMARKS: See Voss and Jansa (2009) for an emended generic description. Despite a voluminous literature, Didelphis has not been comprehensively revised since the early 20th century, and the species-level taxonomy is correspondingly problematic. Six species are currently recognized, of which the Virginia opossum ( D. virginiana ) is consistently recovered as the sister taxon to a Neotropical complex that includes three “white-eared” species ( D. albiventris , D. imperfecta , D. pernigra ) and two “black-eared” species ( D. aurita , D. marsupialis ) (Amador and Giannini, 2016; Dias and Perini, 2018; Dias et al., 2020). Whereas white-eared opossums are morphologically quite distinct from black-eared opossums and occur sympatrically with them in various combinations—for example, D. marsupialis with D. imperfecta in the Guianas, D. aurita with D. albiventris in southeastern Brazil —the nominal species within each of these groups are morphologically similar and, apparently, allopatric or parapatric. All six currently recognized species are listed as such below, but there are good reasons to question the taxonomic status quo.