A new species of Amphisbaena (Squamata: Amphisbaenidae) from the Orinoquian region of Colombia

Vertebrate Zoology

article

Juan José Torres-Ramírez¹  Teddy Angarita-Sierra³  Mario Vargas-Ramírez² 

[1] Fundación de Investigación en biodiversidad y conservación;Universidad Nacional de Colombia;Universidad Manuela Beltrán

关键词: burrowing habits;    cryptic species;    fossorial;    integrative taxonomy;    mtDNA;    worm lizard;    South America;   

DOI  :  10.3897/vz.71.e59461

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Pensoft

【 摘 要 】

In northern South America, amphisbaenians are rarely seen among the herpetofauna.Thus, general knowledge about them is very poor. During a herpetological survey in 2012 at Casanare, Colombia, we found two specimens of an unusual Amphisbaena. A third specimen sharing the same morphotype labeled Amphisbaena sp. from Vichada department was found deposided in an Colombian reptile collection. Based on morphological analyses together with phylogenetic analyses of 1029 base pairs of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we describe a new species of Amphisbaena that inhabits in the Orinoquian region of Colombia. The new species is part of a phylogenetic clade together with A. mertensii and A. cunhai (central-southern Brazil), exhibiting a great genetic distance (26.1–28.9%) between the newly identified lineage versus those taxa, and versus the sympatric taxa A. alba and A. fuliginosa. Morphologically, this new Amphisbaena can be distinguished from their congeners by characters combination of number of preocloacal pores, absence of malar scale, postgenial scales and body and caudal annuli counts. Amphisbaena gracilis is on morphology grounds the most similar species. However, the new species can be distinguished from it by having higher body annuli counts, angulus ories aliegned with the edges of the ocular scales and center of frontal scales, less number of large middorsal segments of the first and second body annulus, and rostral scale visible from above. The description of this new Amphisbaena species points out the urgent need to increase the knowledge of worm lizards in Colombia.

【 授权许可】

CC BY