Communities and occurrences of Squamata reptiles in different vegetation types of the Serra de São José, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to learn which species of Squamata reptiles occur in Protected Area São José, in Tiradentes, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Between November 2009 and December 2010 reptiles were captured. In total 157 specimens were recorded of 29 species, 16 snakes, 12 lizards and one amphisbaena. Among the snakes, Dipsadidae showed the greatest richness, with a total of nine species. The group of snakes had the highest number of species present in the community, but 79% of sampled specimens were lizards, Enyalius bilineatus being the most abundant species, with 21% of occurrence. The area with the highest richness was the Cerradão. The lower abundance was found in the Gallery Forest area (n=14), but it was the vegetation type with the highest equitability. Areas of Cerradão and Cerrado sensu strictu showed the most similarity. In these areas five species were recorded in common, Bothrops neuwiedi (n=3) being the only species of snake, and the two species of lizards most abundant in both environments were Enyalius bilineatus (n=32) and Ameivula ocellifera (n=19). Ophiodes striatus and Xenodon merremii were common to Cerradão and Dirty Field areas. There was no species recorded that were common to the environments of Cerrado and Dirty Field but two species not sympatric were found of the same genus, Tropidurus torquatus, which was found only in the Cerrado sensu strictu and Tropidurus itambere exclusively in Dirty Field. Since none of the rarefaction curves reached full asymptote, this highlights the need for further study due to the high probability of new species being recorded for the studied area.

Herpetofauna of Parque Estadual Altamiro de Moura Pacheco: one of the last remnants of seasonal forest in the core region of the Brazilian Cerrado

“…This family includes snakes from different ecological groups (Vidal et al, 2010), and is the richest snake family in the Neotropical Region (Uetz et al, 2018). Other squamate families were represented by few species, cor- roborating what has been found in other Cerrado areas (França & Braz, 2013;Oda et al, 2017;Rios et al, 2017). Interestingly, families composed of species common in open phytophysiognomies of the Cerrado, such as those of Gymnophthalmidae, as well as some other lizard (e.g., Ameivula ocellifera) and snake (e.g., Bothrops pauloensis) species typical of open environments, were not found.…”