Reptilia, Squamata, Amphisbaenidae, Amphisbaena brasiliana (Gray, 1865): range extension.

Abstract

Amphisbaena brasiliana is a Brazilian endemic amphisbaenid (Bérnils and Costa, 2012) described after a single specimen obtained in the municipality of Santarém, state of Pará (Gray, 1865: 448). Besides the type locality and vicinities (Gans, 1971; Spencer, 2012), thespecies is known from other three municipalities in the same state: Belém (Gans, 1971), Aveiro (Rio Cupari; Strauch, 1883) and Parauapebas (" Serra dos Carajás " ; Cunha et al., 1985). Two vouchered but imprecise additional records from localities along the " rio Amazonas " (Amazon River), and one undocumented record for Paraíba do Norte, state of Paraíba, were mentioned by Gans (1971), but this latter record was considered by that author as " questionable ". The species has also been found in Guarantã do Norte, extreme north of the state of Mato Grosso (Mott and Vieites, 2009; Pinna et al., 2010), the southernmost record until now. Herein we report three new municipality records for Amphisbaena brasiliana in the states of Pará and Mato Grosso which greatly extend the known distribution of this species. In addition, we provide data on habitats and a photo of a live specimen. Specimens were collected under IBAMA/SISBIO permits # 02001.000822/2008-71 and # 19518-1, and voucher specimens are deposited at Coleção Zoológica de Vertebrados, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT; Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, Brazil). Records accessed through the HerpNET (Spencer, 2012) data portal are held in the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA). In December 2006, a single individual of Amphisbaena brasiliana (UFMT 7785) was found in a semi-deciduous forest in the right margin of the reservoir of the hydroelectric power plant Cabeça de Boi, rio Cabeça de Boi, municipality of Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso (10º 19' S, 56º 58' W). In October 2009, another individual (UFMT 8477) was found in an alluvial semi-deciduous forest on the left margin of the reservoir of Herpetology Notes, volume 6: XXX-XXX (2013) (published online on XX Xxxx 2013)