A New Species of Mud Turtle of Genus Kinosternon (Testudines: Kinosternidae) from the Pacific Coastal Plain of Northwestern Mexico

Abstract

We describe a new species of mud turtle of the genus Kinosternon from the Pacific Coastal Plain of the Mexican states Sinaloa and Nayarit. The new species shares morphological characters with the recently described Kinosternon vogti, which are unique to these two turtles and separate them from the other species of the genus. The new species differs from K. vogti by skin coloration, size, and the scutellation of both carapace and plastron. We also present a molecular phylogeny of the family Kinosternidae based on two mitochondrial and four nuclear loci. Our results show that the new species is most closely related to K. vogti, and together they form the sister group to the K. hirtipes and K. integrum species groups of Kinosternon.

Nest site selection and nesting behavior of the mud turtle Kinosternon scorpiodes (Testudines, Kinosternidae) in Palo Verde National Park, Costa Rica: implications for management

“…remarkable amounts of morphological crypsis, with numerous novel species being described recently (e.g. Scott et al 2018, Loc-Barragán et al 2020. Differences between and among dispersed populations in characters as important as egg size therefore may be indicative of more substantial underlying biological differences.…”

Plastic ingestion by freshwater turtles: a review and call to action

“…One additional relevant article on plastic ingestion by a freshwater turtle was brought to our attention by colleagues. We recognize 359 extant turtle species globally of which seven are sea turtles 21 , 26 – 28 , while acknowledging that taxonomy in this group remains fluid.…”

Genomic analyses of the scorpion mud turtle (Kinosternon scorpioides) (Linnaeus, 1766) in insular and continental Colombia: Evidence for multiple conservation and taxonomic units

“…Twenty-five species have been described within the genus but its taxonomy remains controversial, with new species being described as recently as 2020. The species Kinosternon cora was described recently in The Pacific Coastal plain of northwestern Mexico (Loc-Barragań et al, 2020) and the species Kinosternon vogti was described in 2018 in Jalisco, Mexico (Loṕez-Luna et al, 2018).…”

“…Amplicons were purified using magnetic beads and sequenced in both forward and reverse direction on an ABI3500 at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). We chose to work with this nuclear region (R35) because previous studies have shown them to be useful in resolving deep relationships in turtle phylogenetics (Fujita et al, 2004;Loc-Barragań et al, 2020).…”