Anadia species

Myers, C. W. & Donnelly, M. A., 2008, The Summit Herpetofauna Of Auyantepui, Venezuela: Report From The Robert G. Goelet American Museum-Terramar Expedition, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2008 (308), pp. 1-147 : 88-89

Anadia species

Anadia species b: Gorzula and Señaris (1999: 115– 117), description of specimens from Auyantepui.

Gorzula (1992: 276) discovered an unnamed species of Anadia on Auyantepui in 1984. According to Gorzula and Señaris (1999: 115–117) the species is known only from a single collection of seven specimens obtained ‘‘ 6 miles E Angel Falls’’ in May and June. The specimens were found mostly in concealment by day, in association with the frogs Stefania schuberti and Tepuihyla edelcae and the lizard Tropidurus bogerti . One ‘‘was observed basking on the edge of a vegetation mat … [and on] being approached it dove into a small pool that was about 6 cm deep, and hid in the detritus on the bottom’’.

Gorzula and Señaris (1999: 115) were unable to ascertain the present whereabouts of the specimens and therefore refrained from formally describing the species. They did, however, describe the individual lizard that was to have been designated the holotype and indicated variation in the potential paratypes. The color in life ‘‘was dark olive with irregularly distributed black flecks … ventral color of females was white with irregular black spots … [male ventral color] similar to that of the females except … tinged with red’’. Illustrations were unavailable.

Anadia is a primarily Andean genus that also extends north and west into lower Central America, and east across extreme northern Venezuela to the Península de Paria (Rivas et al., 1999), thence southeastward to the tepuis in Estado Bolívar. There are in the last region at least three still-unnamed species according to Gorzula (1992: 276), who mentioned one species from the Chimantá massif and two species from Auyantepui and the La Escalera region, although only the Chimantá and Auyantepui species were listed in the later work by Gorzula and Señaris (1999: 114–117). Gorzula (1992: 310) provid- ed color photographs of the undescribed species from the Chimantá massif (see also photo 88 in Gorzula and Señaris, 1999).24

Aside from the above mentioned description of the Auyantepui species and Gorzula’s photographs of the one on neighboring Chimantá, nothing has been published on the unnamed species of Anadia in the

24 For the Chimantá species, Gorzula (1992) used the manuscript name ‘‘ Anadia breweri ’’, which is a nomen nudum as pointed out by Gorzula and Señaris (1999: 114).

Venezuelan Guayana. We have noted that

Anadia differs most conspicuously from other tepui microteiids in having a tight covering of nonmucronate (and usually smooth) dorsal scales that are juxtaposed or only subimbricate, as well in having a very long tail and a relatively attenuated, flat-topped snout that give it a distinctive aspect. Anadia evidently differs from Adercosaurus in hemipenial morphology (comblike rows of spinules in Anadia ) and in the dorsal surface of the tongue (scalelike papillae anteriorly), but summary data for Anadia have not been published. Anadia , however, has been characterized as having (in 9 species) 6–10 swollen infralingual plicae ( Harris, 1985) …. (Myers and Donnelly, 2001: 52)

Although Anadia is normally characterized by smooth dorsal scales, the species on Auyantepui has smooth dorsals on the neck and then ‘‘dorsal scales progressively keeled and less rounded’’ (Gorzula and Señaris, 1999: 116). The hemipenis of Anadia metallica (5 A. ocellata ), a Central American species, had been incorrectly described as a smooth, unbifurcated bulbous structure, but fully everted organs of that species are seen to be bilobed and to bear comblike rows of spinules, which are characteristic of many albeit not all microteiids (Myers and Donnelly, 2001: 49). The extent of variation in the hemipenis and other internal structures of Anadia is unknown. Despite the monographic treatment by Oftedal (1974), Anadia remains poorly characterized and additional study is sorely needed.

Added in press: The Auyán species was rediscovered recently according to Gilson Rivas and Renaud Boistel (GR personal commun., October 10, 2007), who kindly sent a photograph (taken by J.-C. de Massary) that shows a brown lizard with irregular black markings and apparently keeled dorsal scales. Confirmation as Anadia awaits closer examination, but it clearly differs from the species on the Chimantá massif.