Digging
| Digging | ||||||||||||
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Oscaecilia bassleri |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Caeciliidae | ||||||||||||
| Rafinesque , 1814 |
The earthworms (Caeciliidae) are the most species and form richest family of the sneak amphibians (Gymnophiona). They occur in tropical Central and South America .
features
Earth burrows are up to 160 centimeters long ( Caecilia thompsoni ). The skull, like that of all burrowing sneak amphibians, consists of a few, firmly fused bones. The post frontal is missing. The eyes are covered with skin and, in some species, with bone scales. Dander may be present or absent. The body is curled by completely or partially surrounding skin folds (annuli). The primary annuli run over the underlying vertebrae . There may be secondary and tertiary annuli between them. All species are tailless, with some ending in a terminal scale. Most species are black or dark gray in color, others bluish or pink, some are striped.
They are the only sneak amphibians who have an imperfect stapes, an ossicle , an inner row of teeth with single-pointed teeth in the lower jaw and eyes that are grown around or covered by the maxillopalatine . Phylogenetically, they are defined as those sneak amphibians that are more closely related to Caecilia tentaculata than to Typhlonectes compressicauda .
Way of life and reproduction
All burrows live digging in the ground. Many species are viviparous (live-bearing), others lay eggs from which fully developed young animals or aquatic larvae hatch.
Genera and species
There are two genera and over 40 species:
- Genus Caecilia , northern South America, Panama .
- Caecilia abitaguae
- Caecilia albiventris
- Caecilia antioquiaensis
- Caecilia armata
- Caecilia attenuata
- Caecilia bokermanni
- Caecilia caribea
- Caecilia corpulenta
- Caecilia crassisquama
- Caecilia degenerata
- Caecilia disossea
- Caecilia dunni
- Caecilia flavopunctata
- Caecilia gracilis
- Caecilia guntheri
- Caecilia inca
- Caecilia isthmica
- Caecilia iwokramae
- Caecilia leucocephala
- Caecilia marcusi
- Caecilia mertensi
- Caecilia nigricans
- Caecilia occidentalis
- Caecilia orientalis
- Caecilia pachynema
- Caecilia perdita
- Caecilia pressula
- Caecilia pulchraserrana
- Caecilia subdermalis
- Caecilia subnigricans
- Caecilia subterminalis
- Wormwheel ( Caecilia tentaculata )
- Caecilia tenuissima
- Caecilia thompsoni
- Caecilia volcani
- Genus Oscaecilia , northern South America, Panama.
literature
- Werner Himstedt: Die Blindwühlen ( The New Brehm Library ; Vol. 630). Westarp-Wiss, Magdeburg 1996, ISBN 3-89432-434-1 .
- Wilfried Westheide and Reinhard Rieger : Special Zoology, Part 2: Vertebrae and Skull Animals . 1st edition. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-8274-0307-3 .
- Kurt Deckert , Gisela Deckert , Günther E. Freytag, Günther Peters , Günther Sterba : Urania Tierreich. Fish, amphibians, reptiles . Urania-Verlag, Leipzig 1991, ISBN 3-332-00376-3 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Mark Wilkinson, Diego San Mauro, Emma Sherratt, David J. Gower: A nine-family classification of caecilians (Amphibia: Gymnophiona) . In: Zootaxa , (2011), ISSN 1175-5334 online ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Andrés R. Acosta-Galvis, Mauricio Torres and Paola Pulido-Santacruz. 2019. A New Species of Caecilia (Gymnophiona, Caeciliidae) from the Magdalena Valley Region of Colombia . ZooKeys. 884: 135-157. DOI: 10.3897 / zookeys.884.35776
