Epictia goudotii ( Duméril & Bibron 1844 ), Dumeril & Bibron, 1844

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 : 19-22

Epictia goudotii ( Duméril & Bibron 1844)

Fig. 12

Stenostoma goudotii Duméril & Bibron 1844 , Erpetologie Générale ou Histoire Naturelle Complete des Reptiles, 6:330.

Stenostoma fallax Peters 1858 [dated 1857] in Peters & Orejas-Miranda 1970, Bulletin of the United States National Museum, 297:169–170.

Stenostoma goudoti— Jan 1861, Archivio Per La Zoologia, L’Anatomia e La Fisiologia, Genova, 1:188.

Stenostoma goudottii— Cope 1876 [dated 1875], Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 8(2):129.

Glauconia goudotii— Boulenger 1893, Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum, 1: 64.

Leptotyphlops goudotii— Amaral 1930 [dated 1929], Memórias do Instituto Butantan, 4: 139

Leptotyphlops goudoti— Taylor 1940 [dated 1939], University of Kansas Science Bulletin, 26(15):540.

Leptotyphlops goudotii— Dunn 1944, Caldasia, 3:53.

Leptotyphlops goudoti— Dunn 1946, Caldasia, 4:122.

Leptotyphlops albifrons margaritae Roze 1952 , Memoria de La Sociedad de Ciencias Naturales La Salle, 12:154.

Leptotyphlops albifrons margaritae— Roze 1966, La Taxonomia y Zoogeografia de los Ofidios en Venezuela, 42–43.

Leptotyphlops goudotii goudotii— Peters & Orejas-Miranda 1970, Bulletin of the United States National Museum, 297:169– 170.

Leptotyphlops goudoti— Hahn 1979, Catalogue of American Amphibians and Reptiles, 230:3.

Leptotyphlops goudotii goudotii— Hahn 1980, Das Tierreich, 101:14–15.

Leptotyphlops goudotti goudotti— Lancini 1986, Serpientes de Venezuela:170.

Leptotyphlops goudotii goudotii— Perez-Santos & Moreno 1988, Museo Regionale di Scienze Nataturali, 6:419.

Leptotyphlops goudotii— McDiarmid, Campbell & Touré 1999, Snake Species of the World, 1:30–32.

Epictia goudotii— Hedges, Adalsteinsson & Branch in Adalsteisson et al. 2009, Zootaxa, 2244:11.

Holotype. MNHN 1068 ( Fig. 11 ), from “la vallée de la Magdeleine” (= Magdalena river valley), Colombia.

Diagnosis. Epictia goudotii is distinguished from all congeners by the following combination of characters: snout truncate in dorsal and ventral view, rounded slightly acuminate in lateral view; supraocular present, not in contact with first supralabial; supraocular abruptly longer than frontal; rostral scale triangular in dorsal view; first supralabial very short and not reaching eye level; ocular hexagonal with straight shape at the eye level; base of ocular scale expanded; temporal indistinct; fused caudals absent; interoccipital indistinct from dorsal scales; two supralabials (1+1); four infralabials; 227–260 middorsal scales; 213–234 midventral scales; 12–16 subcaudal scales; 10 scales around the middle of tail; rostral white pigmented as apical spine or brownish as head coloration; seven dorsal scale rows with dark brown to brown center and lighter border forming longitudinal zig-zag lines; seven ventral scale rows uniformly brown.

Redescription of the holotype. Adult male, 151 mm TL, 6 mm TAL; 2.6 mm MB; 25.2 TL/TAL; 58.1 TL/ MB; 4.2 mm HL, 2.0 mm HW; head slightly depressed; body subcylindrical, slightly enlarged on the head and slightly tapered caudally near the tail.

Head subcylindrical, twice as long as wide, cervical constriction indistinct; snout truncate in dorsal and ventral views, rounded slightly acuminate in lateral view; rostral straight in frontal and ventral views, dorsal apex triangular, crossing a transverse imaginary line between anterior margins of ocular scales; rostral contacting supranasal and infranasal laterally and frontal dorsally; nasal completely divided horizontally by an oblique suture crossing nostril and descending posteriorly near first supralabial; nostril roughly elliptic, obliquely oriented and placed in the middle of the nasal suture; supranasal about twice as high as long, bordering rostral anteriorly, infranasal inferiorly, first supralabial and ocular scale posteriorly, and frontal and supraocular scales dorsally; supranasal longer than upper border of infranasal scale; infranasal higher than long; infranasal longer than first supralabial; upper lip border formed by rostral, infranasal, anterior supralabial, ocular, and posterior supralabial; temporal scale indistinct from dorsal scales of lateral rows; two supralabials, one anterior to ocular and one posterior (1+1); first supralabial twice as high as long, reaching nostril level and not reaching eye level; second supralabial slightly higher than long, higher than first supralabial, crossing nostril and eye level; ocular hexagonal, enlarged at base of scale, with straight shape in the expanded area in eye level, higher than long, contacting posterior margins of supranasal and first supralabial anteriorly, parietal and second supralabial posteriorly, and supraocular dorsally, with its dorsal apex straight; eye very distinct, concentrated in the anterior area of the expanded upper part of ocular; supraocular longer than wide, not contacting the first supralabial, abruptly longer than frontal, placed between ocular and frontal, contacting supranasal anteriorly, frontal, postfrontal and ocular laterally, and parietal posteriorly; midsaggital head scales (frontal, postfrontal, and interparietal) subequal in size, hexagonal in dorsal view, non imbricate; frontal wider than long, contacting rostral, supranasal, supraocular and postfrontal; postfrontal wider than long, contacting frontal, supraocular, parietals and interparietal; interparietal wider than long, contacting postfrontal, parietals, occipitals and interoccipital; interoccipital almost twice as wide as long, not distinct from other dorsal scales, contacting interparietal, occipitals and the first dorsal scale of the vertebral row; parietal and occipital subequal, irregularly hexagonal; parietal about twice as wide as long, lower margin contacting upper border of second supralabial, posterior margin contacting respective temporal, occipital and interparietal, anterior border in broad contact with ocular, supraocular and postfrontal; occipital almost three times wider than long, its lower limit attaining the level of the upper margin of second supralabial, separated from latter by temporal; symphysial trapezoidal, anterior and posterior borders respectively straight and slightly convex, about five times wider than long; four infralabials on both sides; first three infralabials similar in size, slightly higher than long; fourth infralabial distinctively longer than first three scales, almost twice as long as high, as long as second supralabial. Dorsal scales homogeneous, subhexagonal, smooth, weekly imbricate, and wider than long; 254 middorsal scales; 243 midventral scales; 14 scales rows around midbody, reducing to 10 rows in the middle of the tail; cloacal shield semicircular, almost three times wider than long; 12 subcaudals; fused caudals absent; terminal spine large, conical, wider than long.

Colour of the holotype in preservative: Seven dorsal scale rows dark brown to brown in centre of each scale with pale border forming longitudinal zig-zag lines; seven lateroventral scale rows uniformly brown; lower margins of scales forming the upper lip lighter than dorsal pattern; rostral scale with same pattern as head coloration; cloacal shield brown; terminal spine and last caudal scales white.

Variation: Middorsal scales 227–260 (x¯ = 238.1 ± 10.9, n = 7); midventral scales 213–234 (x¯ = 221.0 ± 8.2, n = 5); subcaudal scales 12–16 (x¯ = 15.1 ± 1.5, n = 7); TL 83–135 mm (x¯ = 112.0 ± 17.2, n = 7); TL/TAL ratio 15.1– 23.0 (x¯ = 19.4 ± 2.5, n = 7); TAL 4.4–6.6% of TL (x¯ = 5.2 ± 0.0, n = 7); TL/MB ratio 52.9–63.6 (x¯ = 58.2 ± 4.8, n = 5); TAL/MT ratio 2.9–3.9 (x¯ = 3.5 ± 0.4, n = 5); relative eye diameter 1.6–3.1 (x¯ = 2.1 ± 0.6, n = 5); rostral width 0.4–0.6 (x¯ = 0.5 ± 0.1, n = 5).

Distribution. In Colombia, Epictia goudotii occurs on Atlantic coast near Caribbean Sea, Magdalena River Valley and west versant of Cordillera Oriental, from PNN Isla de Salamanca (10º58’N 74º30’W) northeast to Cienaga (11º00’34”N 74º15’15”W) and southeast to Ambalema (04º47’N 74º46’W); from sea level up to about 600 m ( Fig. 3 ).

Remarks. Duméril and Bribon (1844) described Stenostoma goudotii based on a single specimen from “la vallée de la Magdeleine” (= Magdalena river valley). Dunn and Saxe (1950) rejected the characters proposed by Taylor (1940) to distinct L. goudotii and L. magnamaculata . As such, they considered L. goudotii and L. magnamaculata as subspecies of Leptotyphlops albifrons (= L. a. goudotii and L. a. magnamaculatus ). Roze (1952) described Leptotyphlops albifrons margaritae from São Francisco de Macanao, Isla Margarita, Venezuela and distinguished this new taxon from the former species by its robust body compared to the slender L. a. goudotii . Peters and Orejas-Miranda (1970) recognized some previously described species ( L. phenops , L. magnamaculata and L. ater ) as subspecies of Leptotyphlops goudotii , and placed L. bakewelli in the synonymy of L. goudotii phenops whereas considered L. albifrons margaritae as a synonym of L. goudotii goudotii . Pérez-Santos and Moreno (1988) recorded L. albifrons to Atlantic coast and Cordilleras Central and Oriental of Colombia. Those records probably represent E. goudotii specimens. Adalsteinsson et al. (2009) recognized E. goudotii magnamaculata and E. goudotii goudotii as full species, since E. goudotii magnamaculata (sensu Adalsteinsson et al. 2009) is closely related to E. columbi than to E. goudotii goudotti . Although, there is a tissue sample identified as E. goudotii goudotii by the authors from Mexico, it species is distributed from Panama to Colombia ( Peters & Orejas-Miranda 1970). In this sense, we suspect that terminal used by Adalsteinsson et al. (2009) to E. g. goudotii was E. goudotii phenops ( Cope, 1876) , a subspecies distributed from Mexico to Nicaragua (Peters & Orejas- Miranda 1970). Therefore, we propose the use of Epictia phenops in the specific rank according to the results of Adalsteinsson et al. (2009), and that status of E. g. goudotii could be maintained until further evidence on their relationship became available.

Figures

FIGURE 3. Geographic distribution of species of the tribe Epictini in Colombia. Type localities correspond to white symbols.

FIGURE 11. Dorsal (A) and lateral (B) views of the Tricheilostoma macrolepis (MHUA 14509) in life from Capitan, Briceño, departament of Antioquia.

FIGURE 12. Dorsal (A), lateral (B), and ventral (C) views of head of the holotype of Epictia goudotii (MNHN 1068).