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Peramorphic males and extreme sexual dimorphism in Monodelphis dimidiata (Didelphidae)

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Abstract

The southern short-tailed opossum, Monodelphis dimidiata, is a species known not only for its semelparous life cycle, but also for the extreme sexual dimorphism of adults, where males are not only larger, but also have distinctive morphological characters in their skull. Using geometric morphometrics and a suite of statistical tests, I analyzed the postweaning ontogenetic development of this species in order to evaluate the age-class where sexual dimorphism becomes significant and the amount of change exhibited by both sexes. My results showed that M. dimidiata partly follows the ontogenetic pattern described for didelphids by previous authors. The character that escapes the general pattern is rostral length, which becomes shorter instead of lengthening throughout the development. This change could be related to an increment in the bite force in the anterior part of the dentition. The amount of sexual dimorphism found for this species is larger than the reported previously for other American marsupials, and I also found a higher rate of growth in males at the attaining of sexual maturity. Based on my results and the information available for other didelphids, I can suggest that M. dimidiata males undergo through a process of hypermorphosis, resulting in a peramorphic condition. It is possible that the extreme sexual dimorphism present in this species is related to reproductive success, specially taking into account their semelparous life cycle.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to the following curators for access to the collections under their care and sending additional information: D. Flores (Div. Mastozoología, Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”), D. Romero (Área Mastozoología, Museo Municipal de Ciencias Naturales “Lorenzo Scaglia”), S. Bogan (Fundación de Historia Natural Félix de Azara) and I. Olivares (Sección Mastozoología, Museo de La Plata). P. Piras for sending me the R scripts to run the multivariate tests for modeling allometric trajectories. F. Prevosti for the useful discussions and suggestions and critically reading the manuscript. D. Flores for critically reading the manuscript. F. Abdala and an anonymous reviewer made useful suggestions to improve the manuscript. This is a contribution to PICT 2012-0256 from the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica.

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  1. División Mastozoología, Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’, CONICET, Av. Angel Gallardo 470, 1405, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    M. Amelia Chemisquy

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  1. M. Amelia Chemisquy
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Correspondence to M. Amelia Chemisquy.

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Communicated by A. Schmidt-Rhaesa.

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Chemisquy, M.A. Peramorphic males and extreme sexual dimorphism in Monodelphis dimidiata (Didelphidae). Zoomorphology 134, 587–599 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00435-015-0274-7

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