Potamites ecpleopus ( Cope, 1875 )

Diago-Toro, María F., García-Cobos, Daniela, Brigante-Luna, Giovanni D. & Vásquez-Restrepo, Juan D., 2021, Fantastic lizards and where to find them: cis-Andean microteiids (Squamata: Alopoglossidae & Gymnophthalmidae) from the Colombian Orinoquia and Amazonia, Zootaxa 5067 (3), pp. 377-400 : 388

Potamites ecpleopus ( Cope, 1875)

Distribution: Distributed in the Amazonia of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia ( Ribeiro-Júnior & Amaral 2017). In Colombia in the south portion of the Amazonia region, including the departments of Caquetá, Putumayo, Vaupés, Amazonas, and the eastern foothills of Huila and Cauca ( Fig. 4C ).

Similar species: This species may be confused with Gelanesaurus spp. and Neusticurus medemi , being differentiated from these two in having six longitudinal rows of tubercles on the dorsum (four rows of keeled enlarged scales forming longitudinal ridges in Gelanesaurus , and small and irregular scales non-forming ridges in N. medemi ). See Ávila-Pires (1995) for a more detailed description.

Remarks: Currently, Potamites ecpleopus represents a non-monophyletic clade ( Torres-Carvajal et al. 2016; Moravec et al. 2018). Among the variations we observed, we found some specimens with frontonasal scale single (n=10) and others with frontonasal divided (n=7). We also found variation in the presence (n=10) and absence (n=7) of a diamond-shaped azygous scale between prefrontals and frontonasals. Although there are no evident geographical patterns, we observe that most specimens with divided frontonasal have the diamond-shaped scale (70%), while when single, most of them lacked this scale (71%).

Figures

FIGURE 4. Distribution maps for the cis-Andean microteiid lizards in Colombia (Alopoglossidae + Gymnophthalmidae). Circles are examined specimens, while squares are records from literature (see Supplementary Files for specific references). Red arrows indicate new records for Colombia. Black arrows show a zoom in to regions where several records overlap. The light green shadow indicates the Orinoco River basin, and the dark green the Amazon River basin.