Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Responsive image
Issue: Vol. 4438 No. 2: 21 Jun. 2018
Type: Article
Published: 2018-06-21
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4438.2.6
Page range: 313–326
Abstract views: 94
PDF downloaded: 3

A new skink of the genus Sphenomorphus Fitzinger, 1843 (Squamata: Scincidae) from Hon Ba Nature Reserve, southern Vietnam

Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, 03 Quang Trung St., Da Nang City, Vietnam Institute of Tropical Biology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, 85 Tran Quoc Toan St., Dist. 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Indo-Myanmar Conservation, No. 1806, C14 Bac Ha Building, To Huu St, Tu Liem Dist, Hanoi, Vietnam.
Indo-Myanmar Conservation, No. 1806, C14 Bac Ha Building, To Huu St, Tu Liem Dist, Hanoi, Vietnam.
Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab 1, St. Petersburg 199034, Russia.
Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park, Toronto, Canada M5S 2C6.
Reptilia COI gene forest skink Sphenomorphus buenloicus Sphenomorphus yersini asymmetrical hemipenis

Abstract

A new forest skink of the genus Sphenomorphus Fitzinger, 1843 is described from Khanh Hoa Province, southern Vietnam based on morphological characters of four specimens and a fragment of 653 nucleotides of the gene COI. Sphenomorphus yersini sp. nov. is characterized by the following morphological characters: medium size in adults (snout-vent length up to 55 mm); tail length/snout-vent length ratio 1.81; toes reach to fingers when limbs adpressed; midbody scale rows 32–34, smooth; paravertebral scales 61–69; ventral scale rows 58–67; subcaudal scales 112; supraoculars four, rarely five; prefrontals in broad contact with one another; loreal scales two; tympanum deeply sunk; smooth lamellae beneath finger and toe IV 10–12 and 18–20 respectively; a pair of enlarged precloacal scales; hemipenis deeply forked and asymmetrical with two differently sized smooth lobes. The new species differs from its most similar congener, Sphenomorphus buenloicus Darevsky & Nguyen, 1983, by 16.4–16.7% uncorrected p-distance in COI sequences.

 

References

  1. Boulenger, G.A. (1900) Description of new reptiles and batrachians from Borneo. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 69, 182–187.
    https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1890.tb01716.x

    Bourret, R. (2009) Les Lezards de L'Indochine. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, 624 pp.

    Darevsky, I.S. & Nguyen, S.V. (1983) New and little known lizard species from Vietnam. Zoologitchesky Zhurnal, 62, 1827–1837. [in Russian]

    Darevsky, I.S. & Orlov, N.L. (2005) New species of limb-reduced lygosomine skink genus Leptoseps Greer, 1997 (Sauria, Scincidae) from Vietnam. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 12, 65–68.

    Darevsky, I.S., Orlov, N.L. & Ho, C.T. (2004) Two new lygosomine skinks of the genus Sphenomorphus Fitzinger, 1843 (Sauria, Scincidae) from northern Vietnam. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 11, 111–120.

    Datta-Roy, A., Das, I., Bauer, A.M., Lyngdoh, R.K. & Karanth, P. (2013) Lizard wears shades. A spectacled Sphenomorphus (Squamata: Scindidae), from the Sacred Forests of Mawphlang, Meghalaya, North-east India. Zootaxa, 3701 (2), 257–276.
    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3701.2.7

    Fitzinger, L. (1843) Systema Reptilium - Fasciculus primus - Amblyglossae. Braumüller et Seidel, Vindodonae [Wienna], 106 + VI pp.

    Formal, O., Black, M., Hoeh, W., Lutz, R. & Vrijenhoek, R. (1994) DNA primers for amplification of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I from diverse metazoan invertebrates. Molecular Marine Biology and Biotechnology, 3, 294–299.

    Grismer, L.L., Wood, P.L. & Grismer, J.L. (2009) A new insular species of skink of the genus Sphenomorphus Strauch 1887 (Squamata: Scincidae) from Pulau Perhentian Besar, Terengganu, Peninsular Malaysia. Tropical Life Sciences Research, 20, 51–69.

    Grismer, L.L. & Quah, E.S.H. (2015) The rediscovery of Sphenomorphus malayanus Doria 1888 (Squamata: Scincidae) from the Titiwangsa Mountain Range of Peninsular Malaysia and its re-description as S. senja sp. nov. Zootaxa, 3931 (1), 63–70.
    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3931.1.4

    Hebert, P.D.N., de Waard, J.R. & Landry, J.F. (2010) DNA barcodes for 1/1000 of the animal kingdom. Biological Letters, 6, 359–362.
    https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2009.0848

    Jeong, T.J., Jun, J., Han, S., Kim, H.T., Oh, K. & Kwak, M. (2013) DNA barcode reference data for the Korean herpetofauna and their applications. Molecular Ecology Resources, 13, 1019–1032.
    https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.12055

    Linkem, C.W., Diesmos, A.C. & Brown, R.M. (2010) A new species of scincid lizard (genus Sphenomorphus) from Palawan Island, Philippines. Herpetologica, 66, 67–79.
    https://doi.org/10.1655/08-074.1

    Murphy, R.W., Crawford, A.J., Bauer, A.M., Che, J., Donnellan, S.C., Fritz, U., Haddad, C.F.B., Nagy, Z.T., Poyarkov, N.A., Vences, M., Wang, W. & Zhang, Y.P. (2013) Cold Code: the global initiative to DNA barcode amphibians and nonavian reptiles. Molecular Ecology Resources, 13, 161–167.
    https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.12050

    Nguyen, T.Q., Nguyen, K.V., van Devender, R.W., Bonkowski, M. & Ziegler, T. (2013) A new species of Sphenomorphus Fitzinger, 1843 (Squamata: Sauria: Scincidae) from Vietnam. Zootaxa, 3734 (1), 56–62.
    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3734.1.6

    Nguyen, T.Q., Schmitz, A., Nguyen, T.T., Orlov, N.L., Bohme, W. & Ziegler, T. (2011) Review of the genus Sphenomorphus Fitzinger, 1843 (Squamata: Sauria: Scincidae) in Vietnam, with description of a new species from northern Vietnam and southern China and the first record of Sphenomorphus mimicus Taylor, 1962 from Vietnam. Journal of Herpetology, 45, 145–154.
    https://doi.org/10.1670/09-068.1

    Nguyen, T.Q., Tran, T.T., Nguyen, T.T., Bohme, W. & Ziegler, T. (2012) First record of Sphenomorphus incognitus (Thompson, 1912) (Squamata: Scincidae) from Vietnam with some notes on natural history. Asian Herpetological Research, 3, 147–150.
    https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1245.2012.00147

    Neang, T. & Poyarkov, N.A. (2016) First record of the Buonluoi forest skink Sphenomorphus buenloicus Darevsky & Nguyen, 1983 (Squamata: Scincidae) from Cambodia. Cambodian Journal of Natural History, 2016, 114–118.

    Ridley, M. (2004) Evolution. 3rd Edition. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, xxv + 751 pp.

    Simpson, G.G. (1961) Principles of Animal Taxonomy. Columbia University, New York, 247 pp.

    Smith, M.A. (1935) The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol. II. Sauria. Taylor and Francis, London, xiii + 440 pp., 1 pl.

    Sumarli, A., Grismer, L., Wood, P.L., Ahmad, A.B., Rizal, S., Ismail, L.H., Izam, N.A.M., Ahmad, N. & Linkem, C.W. (2016) The first riparian skink (genus: Sphenomorphus Strauch, 1887) from Peninsular Malaysia and its relationship to other Indochinese and Sundaic species. Zootaxa, 4173 (1), 29–44.
    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4173.1.3

    Tamura, K., Peterson, D., Peterson, N., Stecher, G., Nei, M. & Kumar, S. (2011) MEGA5: Molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 28, 2731–2739.
    https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr121

    Taylor, E.H. (1963) The lizards of Thailand. University of Kansas Science Bulletin, 44, 687–1077.

    Thompson, J.D., Higgins, D.G. & Gibson, T.J. (1994) CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Research, 22, 4673–4680.
    https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/22.22.4673

    Uetz, P., Freed, P. & Hosek, J. (Eds.) (2017) The Reptile Database. Available from: http://www.reptile-database.org/ (accessed 23 January 2017)

    Wiley, E.O. & Lieberman, B.S. (2011) Phylogenetics: Theory and Practice of Phylogenetic Systematics. Wiley-Blackwell, Singapore, xvi + 406 pp.