Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Una nueva especie del género Monodelphis (Didelphimorphia: Didelphidae) de la Sierra de Lema, Venezuela

2003; Volume: 63; Linguagem: Inglês

2443-4698

Daniel K. Lew, Roger Pérez Hernández,

Comparative Animal Anatomy Studies

A new species of the genus Monodelphis (Didelphimorphia: Didelphidae) from sierra de Lema, Venezuela Abstract. A new species of marsupial of the genus Monodelphis is described, based on a specimen collected in the Sierra de Lema (Bolivar State, Venezuela), at the northern border of the Guiana Shield, an area dominated by ombrophilous, evergreen, montane forests. This new taxon is distinguished from the remaining species of the genus present in Venezuela -particularly from the apparently sympatric Monodelphis brevicaudata- by several features: its colour (dark brown dorsum and ventrum) and its cranial morphology (including the presence of diastema between PM1 and PM2). The diagnosis of the new species is supplemented with skull measurements and qualitative comparisons with the other species known in the country, and especially with Monodelphis adusta (which has a strictly Andean distribution), with which it shows the closest morphological similarity.