A new species of saxicolous Lepidophyma (Squamata, Xantusiidae) from Tamaulipas, Mexico

Abstract

We describe a new saxicolous species of Lepidophyma from the Sierra Madre Oriental, in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico and provide morphological and molecular data to support the novelty of this species. The new species is most closely related to members of the L. sylvaticum group; however; it is a flattened form specialised for a saxicolous lifestyle and it can be distinguished from all other members by a combination of meristic characters. Genetic analysis suggests that several populations of L. sylvaticum might represent additional novel taxa, while the validity of L. micropholis is questioned. We discuss conservation priorities of the new species.

A novel species of piping frog Eleutherodactylus (Anura, Eleutherodactylidae) from southern Mexico

“…Our phylogenetic results (Fig. 1) are mostly in concordance with other molecular phylogenies of the subgenus Syrrhophus (Grünwald et al 2018(Grünwald et al , 2021Hernandez-Austria et al 2022;Devitt et al 2023). The novel species is nested within the Eleutherodactylus nitidus species group as defined by Grünwald et al (2018Grünwald et al ( , 2021.…”

“…We examined specimens of all currently recognised species of the subgenus Syrrhophus (Frost, 2020) and measured specimens of all species, except for the enigmatic E. verruculatus (Peters, 1870), whose existence has been questioned by several authors (Firschein 1954;Lynch 1970;Grünwald et al 2018Grünwald et al , 2021.…”

“…The characters and terminology we use herein follow those of Lynch and Duellman (1997), Savage (2002) and Grünwald et al (2018Grünwald et al ( , 2021. We took the following measurements for each specimen (abbreviations listed in parentheses): snout-vent length (SVL); head length (HL); head width (HW); eyelid width (EW); interorbital distance (IOD); internarial distance (IND); eye-naris distance (END); diameter of eye (ED); width of tympanum (TW); height of tympanum (TH); eye-tympanum distance (ETD); upper arm length (UpL); forearm length (FoL); palm length (PaL), total hand length (HaL); length of 1 st finger (F1L); width of pad on 1 st finger (F1PW); width of 1 st finger (F1W); length of 2 nd finger (F2L); width of pad on 2 nd finger (F2PW); width of 2 nd finger (F2W); length of 3 rd finger (F3L); width of pad on 3 rd finger (F3PW); width of 3 rd finger (F3W); length of 4 th finger (F4L); width of pad on 4 th finger (F4PW); width of 4 th finger (F4W); inner palmar tubercle length (IPTL); middle palmar tubercle length (MPTL); outer palmar tubercle length (OPTL); femur length (FeL); tibia length (TL); tarsal length (TaL), foot length (FL), total foot length (TotFL); length of 2 nd toe (T2L); width of pad on 2 nd toe (T2PW); width of 2 nd toe (T2W); length of 3 rd toe (T3L); width of pad on 3 rd toe (T3PW); width of 3 rd toe (T3W); length of 4 th toe (T4L); width of pad on 4 th toe (T4PW); width of 4 th toe (T4W); length of 5 th toe (T5L); width of pad on 5 th toe (T5PW); width of 5 th toe (T5W); inner metatarsal tubercle length (IMTL); and outer metatarsal tubercle length (OMTL).…”

“…We recorded vocalisations of several individuals of the new species described here, as well as all other members of the Eleutherodactylus (Syrrhophus) nitidus species group (sensu Grünwald et al (2018Grünwald et al ( , 2021). We recorded the frogs while they were actively calling in the field, using the WavePad free recording software (NCH Software 2015) on various Apple iPhones.…”

“…Recent studies have expanded the diversity within the E. nitidus species group. Palacios-Aguilar and Santos-Bibiano (2020) described a new species of Eleutherodactylus from the foothills of Guerrero, while Grünwald et al (2021) reviewed the group and described two new species from the Sierra Madre del Sur of Guerrero. In addition, Hernández-Austria et al (2022) presented a more detailed phylogeny of the E. longipes species group and described one new species of Eleutherodactylus and re-elevated one species from synonymy.…”