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1 August 2013 Morphological Variation of Atractus carrioni (Serpentes: Dipsadidae)
Paulo Passos, Lourdes Y. Echevarría, Pablo J. Venegas
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Abstract

Atractus carrioni was described based on two specimens from Loja, in the western versant of Cordillera Real, Ecuador. Posteriorly, 13 additional individuals were reported in the literature, but this entire sample was obtained in the neighborhood of Loja, and indeed comprises topotypes of A. carrioni. Thus, despite the fact that we are acquainted with some aspects of the intra-populational variability of the species (few merestic and morphometric features), nothing is known about its ontogenetic, sexual and geographical variation, as well as its natural history. During the examination of Ecuadorian and Peruvian collections, we found 28 additional specimens of this poorly known snake. In this paper, we report new localities and data on meristic, morphometric, color pattern, and hemipenis variation for the species. We associate the variation displayed by these character systems with sexual, geographic, and ontogenetic phenomena. We provide detailed comparisons of the former taxon with their putative closely related species (A. roulei), and propose a new species group to accommodate A. carrioni and A. roulei. Additionally, we provided the first data on reproduction for Andean species of Atractus.

© 2013 Brazilian Society of Herpetology
Paulo Passos, Lourdes Y. Echevarría, and Pablo J. Venegas "Morphological Variation of Atractus carrioni (Serpentes: Dipsadidae)," South American Journal of Herpetology 8(2), 109-120, (1 August 2013). https://doi.org/10.2994/SAJH-D-12-00025.1
Received: 1 November 2012; Accepted: 1 June 2013; Published: 1 August 2013
KEYWORDS
and sexual variation
Atractus carrioni
Atractus roulei
Geographic
natural history
ontogenetic
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