Gardner's short-tailed opossum

Gardner's short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis gardneri) is a marsupial mammal from South America. It was named in 2012 by Sergio Solari, Víctor Pacheco, Elena Vivar and Louise H. Emmons. They named it after Dr. Alfred L. Gardner who took the first specimen of this species.[1][2]

Gardner's short-tailed opossum
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Infraclass: Marsupialia
Order: Didelphimorphia
Family: Didelphidae
Genus: Monodelphis
Species:
M. gardneri
Binomial name
Monodelphis gardneri
Solari, Pacheco, Vivar & Emmons 2012

Description

Collected specimen range from 70–100 mm in head-and-body length. The fur has a Prout Brown to Mummy Brown colour with three distinctive black stripes on its back, reaching from between the ears to the base of the tail. The tail is slightly shorter than half of the head-and-body length. This species, although marsupial, has no pouch for its young.[1][3]

Habitat and ecology

Gardner's short-tailed opossum inhabits the montane forests on the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains in Peru. It was found in dense to semi-open forests or even at the edge between forest and an open sphagnum bog in thickets of dense brush and bamboo. It probably is terrestrial and does not climb trees.[1][3]

Other members of the genus Monodelphis are omnivorous or carnivorous, feeding on insects.[4]

References
  1. Solari, Sergio (2012). "A new species of Monodelphis (Mammalia: Didelphimorphia: Didelphidae) from the montane forests of central Peru" (PDF). Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. 125 (3): 295–307. doi:10.2988/11-33.1. S2CID 85588030. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-09-20. Retrieved 2017-08-07.
  2. "Monodelphis gardneri (Gardner's short-tailed opossum)".
  3. "Tiny new Peruvian opossum comes from a great big family". Smithsonian Insider. 2013-01-22. Retrieved 2017-08-07.
  4. Jones, Menna (2003). Predators with Pouches: The Biology of Carnivorous Marsupials. CSIRO Publishing. pp. 30ff. ISBN 0-643-06634-9.
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