Redescription of Atractus albuquerquei (Serpentes: Colubridae: Dipsadinae), with comments on geographical distribution and intraspecific variation

Abstract

Atractus albuquerquei Cunha and Nascimento, 1983

Atractus albuquerquei Cunha & Nascimento, 1983 (Serpentes, Dipsadidae): first record for the state of Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil

“…These records are open Cerrado areas varying from forested savanna ("cerradão") Green mosaic = Amazon biome; yellow mosaic = Cerrado biome; ■ = type locality; • = records from literature (see Table 1 to hydromorphic open field ("vereda") ( Figure 3). Similar habitat has been reported in Zaher et al (2005), showing that the species is not only restricted to forested areas.…”

“…Atractus albuquerquei occurs in both biomes and is distributed mostly within the Amazon Rainforest, with punctual records in the Cerrado. The species occurrence is currently known for the Brazilian states of Acre, Amazonas, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Pará and Rondônia (Zaher et al 2005;Silva Jr. et al 2009;Silva et al 2010;Souza et al 2011;Maschio et al 2012;Tavares et al 2012 Atractus albuquerquei is characterized by 15 rows of dorsal scales and 170-200 ventral plates; six supralabials (second and third contacting loreals and third and fourth in contact with the eye orbit; nasal plate in contact with first and second supralabials and split above and below the naris; dorsum uniform brown and venter uniform cream colored (Zaher et al 2005).…”

“…After its redescription (Zaher et al 2005), A. albuquerquei was confirmed to the municipalities of Aporé, state of Goiás (Vaz-Silva et al 2007), Ourilândia do Norte, state of Pará (Passos & Fernandes 2008), Cacoal, state of Rondônia (Turci & Bernarde 2008), Serra da Mesa Reservoir, state of Goiás (Moreira et al 2009), Sonora, state of Mato Grosso do Sul (Silva Jr. et al 2009), Bujari, state of Acre (Silva et al 2010), Nova Aripuanã, state of Amazonas (Souza et al 2011), Parauapebas, state of Pará (Maschio et al 2012), Lucas do Rio Verde, state of Mato Grosso (Tavares et al 2012), Chapada dos Veadeiros, state of Goiás (França & Braz 2013) and Vitória do Xingú, state of Pará (Vaz-Silva et al 2015). Records obtained in the database speciesLink (CRIA 2017) were also inserted, totaling 34 localities where the species was found (Table 1).…”

New Cryptic Species of Atractus (Serpentes: Dipsadidae) from Brazilian Amazonia

“…Within the genus Atractus, the intraspecific variation of the hemipenial characters, when observed, is concentrated on micro-and macro-ornamentation structures like spinules, spines, and papillae and/or calyces and flounces respectively (Schargel and Castoe, 2003;Zaher et al, 2005;. Even so, there is the possibility of bias in the preparation of preserved hemipenis, as outlined by Dowling (2004), mainly with respect to partially everted organs in the field.…”

Reclassification of Oligodon ningshaanensis Yuan, 1983 (Ophidia: Colubridae) into a New Genus, Stichophanes gen. nov. with Description on Its Malacophagous Behavior

“…Although some cases for intraspecific variation in hemipenes have been recorded, the differences found were not particularly different in these cases, at least among specimens that share same/close locality (e.g. shape [T-shaped or Y-shaped, Keogh, 1999, Zaher andPrudente, 1999; lobes wider or thinner, Zaher et al, 2005], length [Cole and Hardy, 1981;Keiser, 1974] and ornamentation [Cole and Hardy, 1981;Keogh, 1999;Prudente and Passos, 2010]). The only exception we are aware of is Calamaria lumbricoidea, which has been found with single or forked hemipenis from different geographic distributions (Inger and Marx, 1962).…”