The Atlantic Forest north of the São Francisco River, known as the Pernambuco Endemism Center (PEC), comprises small, poorly-known and, consequently, highly threatened forest remnants, such as Refúgio de Vida Silvestre (RVS) Matas do Siriji, a montane forest located in the municipality of São Vicente Férrer, state of Pernambuco, Northeast Brazil. We provide the results of the first inventory of the squamate fauna of the region with comments on the conservation status of some species, comparisons with other locations in Northeast Brazil and a brief discussion of biogeography. Time-constrained transects, pit-fall traps, occasional encounters and third-party records registered 18 lizard species and 25 snake species, with the rarefaction curve of the former tending to stability. The RVS Matas do Siriji possesses 39.81 % of the lizard and snake species known for the state of de Pernambuco, being the third richest area in species in the State, with a composition similar to that of other areas within PEC. Based on the lists of SEMAS, ICMBio and IUCN, some of the registered species are considered vulnerable to extinction while others have yet to be evaluated. The RVS Matas do Siriji includes a rich, threatened and underestimated fauna of squamate reptiles, indicating that more restrictive protection measures must be adopted in this Conservation Unit.
Foam-nesting frogs of the genus Physalaemus Fitzinger, 1826 have been long known for their diverse acoustic patterns (e.g., Barrio 1965; Bokermann 1966). Of the 49 species, the vocalizations of only three remain unknown to date (see Table 1 of Hepp & Pombal 2020): P. caete Pombal & Madureira, 1997, P. deimaticus Sazima & Caramaschi, 1988, and P. insperatus Cruz, Cassini & Caramaschi, 2008. Physalaemus caete is rare and narrowly distributed in Brazil’s northern Atlantic Forest (Santos et al. 2016; Bernardo et al. 2017; Haddad et al. 2018), and an explosive breeder (EMS pers. obs.). For those reasons the species is classified in the endangered category of Brazil’s red list of threatened species (ICMBio, 2018). Physalaemus caete was described in the late 1990s from the coastal region of the Brazilian state of Alagoas (Passo do Camaragibe) and reported for a second locality in Alagoas (Murici; Pombal & Madureira 1997). Recently, the distribution was extended to a third locality (Paulista, state of Pernambuco; Santos et al. 2016). The distribution range of P. caete coincides with the “Pernambuco endemism center”, a biogeographic subregion of coastal Atlantic Forest north of the São Francisco River (sensu Silva & Casteli 2003). Here we describe the advertisement call of the Pernambuco population of P. caete and make comparisons with calls of congeners.
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