Lizards and snakes of Refúgio de Vida Silvestre Matas do Siriji, an Atlantic Forest hotspot of the Pernambuco Endemism Center, Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

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.

The snake fauna of the most threatened region of the Atlantic Forest: natural history, distribution, species richness and a complement to the Atlas of Brazilian Snakes

“…Georeferencing locality data was also obtained for each specimen observed and photographed in the field (exact observation point). Additionally, original locality data mentioned in the literature were maintained in order to draw the distribution maps (e.g., from Guedes et al 2014;Nogueira et al 2019;Lima et al 2021) for each species. All maps were drawn using the QGIS version 2.18.19 software program (QGIS Core Team 2018).…”

A refuge between houses and buildings: reptiles in a peri-urban Atlantic Forest fragment in northeastern Brazil

“…published reptile lists exist for this region (Santana et al 2008, Roberto et al 2015, Roberto et al 2017, Mesquita et al 2018, Melo et al 2018, Barbosa et al 2019, Filho et al 2020, Lima et al 2021, Oliveira et al 2021, Dubeux et al 2022. Even so, approximately 180 species of reptiles are currently reported from the northern Atlantic Forest, representing about 60% of the total reptile diversity documented in this hotspot (Costa and Bérnils 2018).…”