The Zoochat Photographic Guide to Monotremes and Marsupials

That's great. I'll add in the two new photos (I'll retain the taxidermy photo by carlos55 as well).

For the ear colour of babies, I really wasn't sure one way or another and reference works don't tend to mention the ears except for adults.

 

Just looking through the photos of New World marsupials used in this thread, 13 of the 17 photos are by @Giant Eland...

 

A new paper has split the Australian populations of Sugar Glider Petaurus breviceps into three separate species (ariel, breviceps, notatus). I can't read the paper other than the abstract but a 2009 paper on Petaurus genetics, on which they partly based their work, found two divergent clades in Australia (equating to the new P. breviceps and P. notatus) plus found that ariel was more closely related to other Petaurus species; and found five divergent clades amongst the Sugar Gliders in New Guinea. I'll be making some changes to the Petaurus post in this thread to reflect this but it will be a little messy because I don't have access to the new paper in full and the New Guinea forms haven't been given any new name(s) as far as I'm aware.

However I think there are photos of all three Australian taxa in the galleries, as well as photos of New Guinea animals (and a 2019 genetic study I found says that probably all the animals in the USA trade are from the Sorong area in New Guinea: The origin of exotic pet sugar gliders (Petaurus breviceps) kept in the United States of America).


2009 paper: https://www.researchgate.net/public...pialia_Petauridae_in_Australia_and_New_Guinea

2020 paper (abstract): Integrative taxonomic investigation of Petaurus breviceps (Marsupialia: Petauridae) reveals three distinct species

2020 popular article: A rare discovery: we found the sugar glider is actually three species, but one is disappearing fast

 

The Petaurus post is this one (#47): The Zoochat Photographic Guide to Monotremes and Marsupials


The only photos of wild Sugar Gliders were taken in the Northern Territory (so P. ariel) and in Victoria and tropical Queensland (so both P. notatus).


For the "true" P. breviceps there are no wild photos. The only photos which may show them are of a museum specimen at Queensland Museum (if it was collected locally) and live animals at Wildlife HQ (if they were collected locally), but I have no data on the origin of either. Both photos are by @WhistlingKite24





The popular article linked in the last posts says "Krefft's glider has a clearly defined dorsal stripe" and "The sugar glider, with a less-defined stripe..." which suggests that the second photo above is P. breviceps (less-defined stripe) and the museum photo isn't (clearly-defined stripe) but this feature doesn't appear to be reliable to me as an identification tool and wild photos of animals outside the range of P. breviceps can also show less-defined dorsal stripes. I've linked both photos within the Petaurus post but not the images themselves as I'm not sure.



I left the New Guinea populations under P. breviceps for want of somewhere better (otherwise I'd have had to head them as "Petaurus "breviceps" New Guinea" or something like that), and used a new photo by @Deer Forest2 from Qinhuangdao Wildlife Park in China as the Sugar Gliders traded in Asia are from New Guinea. (This replaces the photo I had used previously by @Maguari because it shows the whole animal).

 

I have now read the new paper on the Sugar Glider splits. Interestingly they also mention another genetic lineage in The Kimberley in Western Australia which exists alongside P. ariel and may be another cryptic species but the data for that one is extremely limited; and some unusual results from Cape York Peninsula which fall more-or-less within P. gracilis (the Mahogany Glider) genetically but are morphologically quite different, being only a quarter of the size.

They mention in passing the five genetic clades in New Guinea as found in the 2009 paper, but otherwise concentrate solely on the Australian populations.

I have put the Wildlife HQ photo (shown in the post above) in as a representative of the new split P. breviceps. It seems that with regards to the dorsal stripe in P. breviceps, it is only sharply defined on the head and then indistinct or absent on the back, whereas in P. notatus it is quite obvious as far along the back as to the hind legs. Also P. notatus has an obvious tapering tail, whereas P. breviceps has a tail of consistent width (this can't be seen in the Wildlife HQ photos, but I found a Youtube video of the same animals). Both features - dorsal stripe and tapering tail - can be seen in the photo below of a wild P. notatus in tropical Queensland which is used in the Petaurus post:




It seems like the white tail-tip may also a distinguishing feature, although I'm not sure this is reliable. It seems larger in P. notatus and small in P. breviceps. Interestingly, New Guinea animals seem to all lack the white tail tip (as can be seen in the photo in the previous post) so this is probably an easy way of distinguishing New Guinea from Australian animals at least.

 

The 2009 paper discusses the New Guinea clades (the new paper merely mentions this in passing). The link to the 2009 paper is a few posts above and is open-access, and it has maps etc - including one (Figure 5) of the New Guinea subspecies versus genetic clades. However, I mixed up the numbers for tafa and papuanus so you are correct and I will fix that error!

 

It isn't often that photos of "new" marsupials get uploaded. A Chaco Fat-tailed Opossum Thylamys pusillus by @Najade makes only the fifteenth species of New World marsupial depicted on Zoochat!

On page 5 of the thread, post #100



Chaco Fat-tailed Opossum (Thyllamys pusillus) - ZooChat

 

I'll check this out when I have some time, and come back to it.

 

A new photo of Guianan Four-eyed Opossum Philander opossum by @RatioTile has been added into the thread (post #98 here: The Zoochat Photographic Guide to Monotremes and Marsupials).


Gray Four-Eyed Opossum (Philander opossum opossum) - ZooChat


The only photos of Philander previously in the Zoochat galleries were taken at Plzen Zoo but I don't know the country of origin of their animals so the actual species is unknown to me. (What was known as the Grey Four-eyed Opossum P. opossum has been split into four species - the "true" P. opossum is now restricted to the Guianan region in northeastern South America).

 

I believe you are correct about the Tarsier Botanika photos. Unfortunately Phalanger species are very confusing (in terms of taxonomy, physical appearances, how photos are labeled on the internet, etc). I have been looking through Flannery's various books on possums without reaching much of a conclusion. It does seem like every small cuscus in an Asian zoo is just labeled as "Sulawesi Dwarf Cuscus", which is annoying.

I don't even know if the ones at Batu Secret Zoo which you linked to are actually Strigocuscus. What are you basing your "look like definite dwarf cuscus" upon? The hind-toes look more like a Phalanger species, and dwarf cuscus are supposed to be brown (or reddish in the Peleng species); they also have fur on the dorsal surface of the tail, although it is very fine and may not be apparent in a photo.

The photos by Alex at Tarsier Botanika look like they are probably one of the group which used to be Common Cuscus (now split into many species) - interestingly his collection of photos of "Sulawesi Dwarf Cuscus" from that visit also include a reddish animal which will be some other species again - The photosession at Tarsier Botanika in Tawala, Philippines).


The only photos I am "sure of" (in quotation marks, because I'm not completely sure!) are the ones of a possum at Taman Safari Bogor labeled as Sulawesi Dwarf Cuscus which, given the white tail, actually depict a very fat Northern Common Cuscus, e.g. the photo below:

 

It was actually not all that old when it died; from memory the various animals at Moscow (there were six imported in the mid-1990s, but all but one died rapidly) were quite sickly. There are several other photographs of the last Moscow animal on Zootierliste which show more body hair than the photograph in this thread would imply.

 

Photo(s) of Mexican Mouse Opossum Marmosa mexicanus have been added by @Najade from Costa Rica


https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/mexican-mouse-opossum-marmosa-mexicana.687103/

 

A new marsupial has been added to the thread for the new year.


Subtropical Antechinus Antechinus subtropicus by @WhistlingKite24


Subtropical Antechinus - ZooChat