New records of the spectacled slender opossum marmosops ocellatus (Didelphimorphia, Didelphidae) with comments on its geographic distribution limits

摘要

Marmosops ocellatus is a small didelphid marsupial that inhabits central and western South America, including Bolivia and western Brazil. In this report, we provide new distributional records based on 14 specimens deposited in mammal collections. Records from Vale de S ? o Domingos and C á ceres, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, extend approximately 200 km northeastward of the currently known range of the species. Considering our records and those from the literature, we believe that M. ocellatus does not occur in the core region of the Pantanal biome, where flooding areas occur. In fact, among the 120 didelphid specimens from the Pantanal that we examined, none corresponds to M. ocellatus. Additionally, among several published inventories and checklists for the Pantanal, only one cites the presence of this species, with no vouchers mentioned. The known records show that this species may be associated with seasonal forests, such as the Chiquitania dry forest in the western Brazilian border, which shapes the species distribution and leads us to think that M. ocellatus may occur farther to the east, close to the upper Rio Cuiab á, where the Chiquitania dry forest meets the Cerrado.