Rhinoleptini Hedges, Adalsteinsson, & Branch

Adalsteinsson, Solny A., Branch, William R., Trape, Sébastien, Vitt, Laurie J. & Hedges, S. Blair, 2009, Molecular phylogeny, classification, and biogeography of snakes of the Family Leptotyphlopidae (Reptilia, Squamata), Zootaxa 2244, pp. 1-50 : 24

Tribe Rhinoleptini Hedges, Adalsteinsson, & Branch , New Tribe

Type genus. Rhinoleptus Orejas-Miranda, Roux-Estève, and Guibé, 1970: 4 .

Diagnosis. Members of Rhinoleptini are the only species of the Epictinae that occur in the Old World. They can usually be distinguished from the Tribe Epictini by possession of a small anterior supralabial scale (usually medium or large in Epictini ). One species of Rhinoleptini ( Guinea sundewalli ) has a large anterior supralabial and two species out of 56 in Epictini ( Siagonodon cupinensis and Rena unguirostris ) have small anterior supralabials (Table 2). The support for this group was 52% BP and 64% PP for the four-gene tree ( Fig. 3) and 87% BP and 100% PP for the nine-gene tree ( Fig. 4).

Content. Two genera and six species ( Table 1; Fig. 9).

Distribution. Rhinoleptini is distributed in equatorial Africa, from southern Senegal, Guinea , and Bioko Island in the west to Ethiopia in the east.

Remarks. Rhinoleptini is a primarily West African clade of leptotyphlopids and comprises the Old World members of the Subfamily Epictinae .