USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

A new species of Cnemidophorus (Squamata, Teiidae) from the Cerrado biome in central Brazil

SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

Alison M. Gainsbury

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2003

ISSN

1526-3614

Abstract

We describe a new species of Cnemidophorus from the northern portion of the Cerrado biome in Tocantins state, Brazil. This species is apparently endemic to the Jalapão, one of the least populated regions of central Brazil, characterized by large tracts of the cerrado physiognomy on sandy soils. A discriminant analysis indicated that scales around tail and femoral pores are the best discriminators among bisexual, Brazilian species of Cnemidophorus south of Amazonia. A naïve Bayesian network constructed with categorical (mostly coloration) variables indicated that the new species had high conditional probabilities of the following qualitative characters: vertebral field light, dorsolateral stripes interrupted, upper lateral stripes continuous, ventral caudals smooth, and dorsal caudals keeled. Ecologically, this species is similar to other New World whiptail lizards except that it is small in body size and females produce clutches of a single egg.

Publisher

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

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