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Issue: Vol. 1004 No. 1: 7 Jun. 2005
Type: Articles
Published: 2005-06-07
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.1004.1.4
Page range: 37–50
Abstract views: 58
PDF downloaded: 2

A new species of Boulengerula Tornier (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Caeciliidae) from an isolated mountain block of the Taita Hills, Kenya

Department of Zoology, The Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Kaiserstraat 63, 2311 GP, Leiden, The Netherlands
Laboratoire d'Ecologie des Sols Tropicaux (UMR 137), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, 32 Avenue Henri Varagnat, 93143 Bondy Cedex, France
Department of Zoology, The Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Division of Molecular Genetics, University of Glasgow, Pontecorvo Building, 56 Dumbarton Road, Glasgow G11 6NU, UK
National Museums of Kenya, Department of Herpetology, P.O. Box 40658-00100 GPO Nairobi
Amphibia caecilians taxonomy herpetology Eastern Arc Mountains East Africa phallus morphology systematics

Abstract

A new species of East African caeciliid caecilian, Boulengerula niedeni spec. nov. (Amphibia: Gymnophiona) is described based on a series of 11 specimens from Sagalla Hill, an isolated mountain block of the Taita Hills in southern Kenya. It differs from all other Boulengerula, except B. taitanus (Loveridge), in being pigmented with whitish marked annular grooves and from B. taitanus by its distinctive brownish colouration, an exposed sphenethmoid, a higher mean number of annuli and vertebrae, and different phallus morphology.

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