Northern Four-eyed Opossum

The northern four-eyed opossum (Philander vossi) is a species of opossum from Central America. == Taxonomy == This species was originally described by the American mammalogist Joel Asaph Allen in 1901 under the name Metachirus fuscogriseus pallidus; fuscogriseus is itself a synonym of Philander melanurus. It would later be elevated to species by German zoologist Paul Matschie in 1916, before being considered a subspecies of Philander opossum again in 1924 by Gerrit Smith Miller, Jr. It would remain at subspecific status until 2018, when an analysis of the cytochrome b, nucDNA, and physical characteristics warranted species status again. In 2020 it was found that the name pallidus was preoccupied by a subspecies of Derby's woolly opossum. The subspecies, today Caluromys derbianus pallidus, was originally described as Philander laniger pallidus, and was described two years before pallidus, in 1899. This makes the name pallidus preoccupied, so in 2020 Alfred L. Gardner and José Ramírez-Pulido decided to make a new species name for this taxa, choosing Philander vossi. P. vossi is the sister species to the black four-eyed opossum (P. nigratus). This species is recognized by the American Society of Mammalogists, but not by the IUCN, which recognizes neither P. pallidus nor…