A revision of the small snakes of the family Anomalepididae (Reptilia: Squamata: Serpentes), using high resolution computerized tomography

• Ano de defesa: 2018
• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Fidélis Júnio Marra
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul; Escola de Ciências; Brasil; PUCRS; Programa de Pós Graduação em Zoologia
• Palavras-chave em Português: Taxonomy; Phylogeny; CT scan; Neotropical; Biodiversity; Taxonomia; Filogenia; Biodiversidade; CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ZOOLOGIA
• Link de acesso: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/8086

The family Anomalepididae currently consists of 18 species known as "blind snakes", fossorial in habit and with geographical distribution restricted to the Neotropical region. Practically, there is no information about the life history of the Anomalepididae, because they are difficult to collect and the maintenance in captivity for biology studies is quite difficult. The information available regarding Anomalepididae snakes is concentrated on anatomical studies, mainly osteology of the skull, taxonomy, and phylogeny at the level of families within Serpentes. But since the description of Anomalepididae by Taylor in 1939, there has been no comprehensive taxonomic review within the family or some phylogenetic inference with new taxonomic arrangements. In relation to the taxonomy of the group, the literature is restricted to the description of new species and taxonomic revisions of two genera (Anomalepis and Liotyphlops). The primary objective of this study was the taxonomic revision of the Anomalepididae and, for this, all possible sampling of species and specimens were used in the acquisition of morphological data, besides the use of the High-resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography (HRXCT) technique. The secondary objective was to infer a phylogenetic hypothesis for the species within Anomalepididae based on the anatomical characters obtained from the specimen examination. This work resulted in a new taxonomic arrangment for Anomalepididae, with 19 valid species, description of two new species of Liotyphlops from Brazil, being one for the state of Mato Grosso and the other for the state of Santa Catarina, and the re-conduction of Liotyphlops beui to the synonymy of Liotyphlops ternetzii. In addition, the parsimony analysis based on characters from the skull and external morphology recovered Anomalepididae as a monophyletic taxon within Scolecophidia.