Tate's woolly mouse opossum
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Tate's woolly mouse opossum (''Marmosa paraguayana'') is an omnivorous, arboreal
South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...
n
marsupial Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a ...
of the family Didelphidae, named after American zoologist
George Henry Hamilton Tate George Henry Hamilton Tate (April 30, 1894 – December 24, 1953) was a British-born United States, American zoologist and botanist, who worked as a mammalogist for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In his lifetime he wro ...
. It is native to Atlantic coastal forests of
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
,
Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
and
Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
. The species lives in both primary and secondary forest, including forest fragments within grassland. Insects are a major component of its diet. It was formerly assigned to the genus '' Micoureus'', which was made a subgenus of ''
Marmosa The 27 species in the genus ''Marmosa'' are relatively small Neotropical members of the family Didelphidae. This genus is one of three that are known as mouse opossums. The others are '' Thylamys'' (the "fat-tailed mouse opossums") and '' Tlacua ...
'' in 2009. While its conservation status is "
least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...
", its habitat is shrinking through
urbanization Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly t ...
and conversion to agriculture over much of its range.


References

* Opossums Mammals of Brazil Mammals of Paraguay Mammals described in 1931 {{marsupial-stub