Epictia signata ( Jan 1861 )

Pinto, Roberta Richard, Passos, Paulo, Portilla, José Rances Caicedo, Arredondo, Juan Camilo & Fernandes, Ronaldo, 2010, Taxonomy of the Threadsnakes of the tribe Epictini (Squamata: Serpentes: Leptotyphlopidae) in Colombia, Zootaxa 2724, pp. 1-28 : 24

Epictia signata ( Jan 1861)

Fig. 14

Stenostoma signatum Jan 1861 , Archivio Per La Zoologia, L’Anatomia e La Fisiologia, Genova, 1:188. Stenostoma signatum— Jan & Sordelli 1861, Icnographie generale des Ophidiens, vol. I, livr. 2, fig. 3. Glauconia signata— Boulenger 1893, Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum, 1:64. Leptotyphlops amazonicus— Hahn 1979, Herpetologica 33:58.

Leptotyphlops amazonicus— Peters & Orejas-Miranda 1970, Bulletin of the United States of National Museum, 297:173. Leptotyphlops amazonicus— Hahn 1980, Das Tierreich, 101:7.

Leptotyphlops signatus— Hahn 1980, Das Tierreich, 101:26.

Leptotyphlops signatus— McDiarmid, Campbell & Touré 1999, Snake Species of the World, 1:43. Epictia signata— Hedges, Adalsteinsson & Branch in Adalsteisson et al. 2009, Zootaxa, 2244:1–50.

Holotype. MNHN 3235 from “patrie inconnue” (= unknown country).

Diagnosis. Epictia signata is distinguished from all congeners by the following combination of characters: snout truncate in dorsal and ventral views, rounded in lateral view; supraocular present, not in contact with first supralabial; rostral scale triangular in dorsal view; ocular subhexagonal with straight shape at the eye level; supraocular longer than frontal scale; temporal indistinct; fused caudals absent; eyes concentrated in the middle area of the expanded upper part of ocular; two supralabials (1+1); four infralabials; 208–282 middorsal scales; 261–214 midventral scales; 14–17 subcaudal scales; 10 scales around the middle of tail; seven dorsal scale rows uniformly brown, and seven lateroventral series light brown; rostral, last subcaudals, and terminal spine white coloured.

Distribution. The single specimen found along collections examination has no specific data other than “ Colombia ”.

Remarks. Stenostoma signatum was described by Jan (1861) through a specimen of unknown provenance. Later the holotype was illustrated by Jan and Sordelli (1861). Hahn (1979), based on the data from Jan (1861), pointed out that this specimen was purchased by the Muséum National d’histoire Naturalle of Paris in 1858 and originally labelled as “ Madagascar?”. Because there are no Leptotyphlopid record’s to Madagascar, Hahn (1979) argued that the label was in error. Leptotyphlops amazonicus was described by Orejas-Miranda (1969) based on five specimens from southeastern Venezuela and one without specific provenance, possibly from Amazon Rainforest of Ecuador. Orejas-Miranda (1969) cited that the paratype (ANSP 3290) from Ecuadorian Amazon was from the Orton collection. However Cope (1876; 1877) did not mention any specimen of Leptotyphlops from Ecuador and Peru collected by the Orton expedition. The Orton expedition was divided in two parts, one ascending the Orinoco River and the other one through the Amazon basin. Thus, it seems that this specimen was collected by the first part while in Venezuela and not by the second in the Amazon ( Cisneros-Heredia 2008).

Hahn (1979) examined the supposed holotype of Stenostoma signatum (MNHN 3235), comparing it with the type series of Leptotyphlops amazonicus . According to Hahn (1979), the holotype of S. signatum is comparable with the L. amazonicus type series in all meristic and morphometic characters and, therefore, he relegated L. amazonicus to the synonymy of the first, restricting the type locality to northern region of Amazonia.

Despite few known specimens and uncertain distribution there are characteristics figured by Jan and Sordelli (1861) and Hahn (1979) that apparently diagnose E. signata from sympatric congeners (e.g., uniformly brown dorsum except for snout and last subcaudal scale white pigmented combined with higher number of middorsal scales and elongate first supralabial). On the basis of such characteristics we identified the specimen IBSP 7204 as E. signata , which is first specimen recorded from Colombia and the eighth known of the species.

Figures

FIGURE 14. Dorsal (A), lateral (B), and ventral (C) views of head of the Epictia signata (IBSP 7204).