American blind snakes
American blind snakes | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Scientific name | ||||||||||||
Anomalepididae | ||||||||||||
Taylor , 1939 |
The American blind snakes (Anomalepididae) are a family of snakes (Serpentes). These are mostly small worm-like snakes 15 to 30 centimeters long, which occur disjointly in southern (west of Colombia and Venezuela, Trinidad , Guiana , eastern Amazon basin, southern Brazil) and Central America (Costa Rica, Panama). About 20 species are known.
features
American blind snakes are relatively thin. Most adults are only 15 to 30 centimeters long, no species grows longer than 40 centimeters. The premaxillary is toothless, the longitudinally oriented maxillary is dentate. Each lower jaw bone (dental) has one to three teeth. Remnants of the pelvic bones can be found in the trunk muscles . The right lung is missing, a tracheal lung is present.
Way of life
American blind snakes live underground, usually near burrows of ants or termites . Details about their behavior are not known because of their hidden way of life. They probably feed mainly on soft invertebrates, especially larvae and eggs of ants and termites. All American blind snakes are oviparous with small clutches of 2 to 13 eggs.
Systematics
The American blind snakes formerly represented a single genus within the blind snakes (Typhlopidae) as anomalepis species , but were later placed in a family of their own and divided into several genera .
The family currently comprises 4 genera with a total of 18 species: (As of February 2016)
- Genus Anomalepis
Jan, 1860
- Anomalepis aspinosus Taylor , 1939
- Anomalepis colombia Marx , 1953
- Anomalepis flavapices Peters , 1957
- Mexican blind snake - Anomalepis mexicanus Jan , 1860
- Genus Helminthophis Peters , 1860
- Helminthophis flavoterminatus ( Peters , 1857)
- Helminthophis frontalis ( Peters , 1860)
- Helminthophis praeocularis Amaral , 1924
- Genus Liotyphlops Peters , 1881
- Liotyphlops albirostris ( Peters , 1857)
- Liotyphlops anops ( Cope , 1899)
- Liotyphlops argaleus Dixon & Kofron , 1984
- Liotyphlops beui ( Amaral , 1924)
- Liotyphlops caissara Centeno , Sawaya & Germano , 2010
- Liotyphlops haadi Silva-haad , Franco & Maldonado , 2008
- Liotyphlops schubarti Vanzolini , 1948
- Liotyphlops ternetzii ( Boulenger , 1896)
- Liotyphlops trefauti Freire , Caramaschi & Argolo , 2007
- Liotyphlops wilderi ( Garman , 1883)
- Genus Typhlophis Fitzinger , 1843
- Typhlophis squamosus ( Schlegel , 1839)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Laurie J. Vitt, Janalee P. Caldwell: Herpetology: An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles. Academic Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0123869197 , p. 603.
- ↑ Anomalepididae in The Reptile Database ; accessed on February 10, 2016.