Philothamnus cf. semivariegatus (Smith, 1840)

Santos, Bruna S., Marques, Mariana P., Bauer, Aaron M. & Ceríaco, Luis M. P., 2021, Herpetological results of Francisco Newton’s Zoological Expedition to Angola (1903 – 1906): a taxonomic revision and new records of a forgotten collection, Zootaxa 5028 (1), pp. 1-80 : 35

Philothamnus cf. semivariegatus (Smith, 1840)

Material (one specimen): One adult specimen (MHNCUP/REP 197, formerly UP-MHNFCP-017412; Fig. S76 ), collected from Chingo [-11.20000º, 13.85000º, 11 m a.s.l.] Kwanza Sul Province, by Francisco Newton on unknown date .

Comments: Philothamnus semivariegatus is widely distributed in sub-Saharan Africa, namely from Senegal to Ethiopia and south to South Africa; it is known mainly from the western parts of Angola, with the exception of the desert regions ( Chippaux 2006; Marques et al. 2018). As previously mentioned, Ferreira cited a specimen of “ Philothamnus irregularis var angolensis ” with 2+2 temporal scales. The author also commented that the fifth and sixth supralabial scales touched the eye. Even though no locality data was written in the specimen’s jar, given that these characteristics are present in specimen MHNCUP/REP 197, we believe they are the same. In addition, although P. irregularis var angolensis is a junior synonym of P. angolensis , we find that the specimen’s morphology corresponds to P. semivariegatus , per Chippaux’s (2006) description. It now constitutes the first published record for Kwanza Sul Province. Recently, Englebrecht et al. (2019) reported P. semivariegatus as paraphyletic and constituting four different species.

Other specimens

Besides the aforementioned, MHNC-UP houses a few more Newton Expedition specimens that are in a suboptimal state of preservation and have no locality data associated with them. In these cases, and when possible, the specimens were identified to genus level – Hyperolius sp. (three specimens, MHNCUP/ANF 293, ANF 299, ANF 303); Sclerophrys sp. (one specimen, MHNC-UP/ANF346); Ranidae (four specimens, MHNCUP/ANF 311, 315– 317); Agama sp. (eleven specimens, MHNCUP/REP 305–315); Trachylepis sp. (two specimens, MHNCUP/REP 270–271). In addition, Ferreira (1904, 1906) published records of a few more species for which we could not locate matches. Listed in Table 1 are the taxa according to the order in which they were published, their collecting localities and number of specimens (when available), as well as their current taxonomic designation.

Figures

FIGURE S76. Specimen of Philotamnus cf. semivariegatus (MHNCUP/REP 197), from Chingo. Photo by Bruna Santos.