Although anuran tadpoles are widely distributed and abundant in tropical aquatic habitats, there is a lack of taxonomic keys for the Atlantic Forest. Herein, we developed a dichotomous key for identifying the tadpoles for all species with known larval phase and already recorded in the Atlantic Forest north of the São Francisco River. We analyzed discrete characteristics of 1,042 tadpoles encompassing 63 species of 28 genera from 32 localities. The user-friendly key includes illustration and pictures, and it is a significant step towards improving our knowledge of tadpoles of the Atlantic Forest.
Siphonops paulensis Boettger, 1892 is a Neotropical siphonopid caecilian widely distributed in South America. Herein, we fill knowledge gaps in the distribution of S. paulensis mostly in northeastern Brazil, including four new state records.
A third species of Brasilotyphlus, a siphonopid caecilian, is described based on six specimens from two twin mountains in Roraima state, northern Brazil. Brasilotyphlus dubium sp. nov. differs from all other congeners in having a combination of 123–129 primary annuli and 9–16 secondary annular grooves. The first molecular data were generated and analyzed for Brasilotyphlus, and the genus was recovered as monophyletic and nested within a paraphyletic Microcaecilia. The extent of genetic and taxonomic sampling, and moderate phylogenetic support are not considered sufficient enough to place Brasilotyphlus in the synonymy of Microcaecilia.
The Neotropical gecko genus Coleodactylus Parker 1926 was, until recently, composed of five species: C. amazonicus (Andersson 1918), C. brachystoma (Amaral 1935), C. meridionalis (Boulenger 1888), C. natalensis Freire 1999, and C. septentrionalis Vanzolini 1980 (Geurgas et al. 2008). However, several phylogenetic analyses recovered a polyphyletic Coleodactylus (Geurgas et al. 2008; Gamble et al. 2011a) leading Gamble et al. (2011b) to recognize a new genus, Chatogekko, for C. amazonicus. Coleodactylus and Chatogekko differ in both morphological and molecular characters. Coleodactylus has smooth dorsal scales and five scales forming the ungual sheath, while Chatogekko has keeled dorsal scales and four scales forming the ungual sheath (Gamble et al. 2011b). Furthermore, all Coleodactylus species have two deletions in the protein coding recombination-activating gene 1 (RAG1), one of six base pairs (bp) and another of 18 bp (Gamble et al. 2008a; Geurgas et al. 2008), while Chatogekko has a unique three bp deletion in the RBMX gene and a three bp deletion in the protein tyrosine phosphatase nonreceptor type 12 gene (PTPN12) (Gamble et al. 2011b). In addition, Chatogekko is differentiated from all others geckos by a unique set of 10 craniofacial features (Gamble et al. 2011b).
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