Gerrhopilus
| Gerrhopilus | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the family | ||||||||||||
| Gerrhopilidae | ||||||||||||
| Vidal , Wynn , Donnellan & Hedges , 2010 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Gerrhopilus | ||||||||||||
| Fitzinger , 1843 |
Gerrhopilus is a genus of snakes from the superfamily of the blind snake-like (Typhlopoidea). The genus was described in 1843 by the Austrian zoologist Leopold Fitzinger and originally belonged to the blind snake family(Typhlopidae). Nicolas Vidal and colleagues placed the genus in the monogeneric family Gerrhopilidaein 2010. Gerrhopilus species occur in South and Southeast Asia and New Guinea .
features
Like all blind snakes, the Gerrhopilus species are small, worm-like snakes that live underground and are 15 to 30 centimeters long. They differ from the blind snakes by glandular structures that are located on the scales of the head, especially on the throat, less on the top of the head in front of the eyes. Another difference is the preocularia (scales in front of the eye (from the tip of the snout)) , which is divided in Gerrhopilus , and an overlap of the preocularia by the second supralabial (not in G. tindalli ).
Systematics
| Blind snake cladogram | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Gerrhopilidae are the sister group of a common clade of blind snakes (Typhlopidae) with the Xenotyphlopidae .
There are 16 known species:
- Gerrhopilus andamanensis (Stoliczka, 1871)
- Gerrhopilus ater (Schlegel, 1839) ( type species )
- Gerrhopilus beddomii (Boulenger, 1890)
- Gerrhopilus bisubocularis (Boettger, 1893)
- Gerrhopilus ceylonicus (Smith, 1943)
- Gerrhopilus depressiceps (Sternfeld, 1913)
- Gerrhopilus floweri (Boulenger, 1899)
- Gerrhopilus fredparkeri (Gelding, 1996)
- Gerrhopilus hades (Kraus, 2005)
- Gerrhopilus hedraeus (Savage, 1950)
- Gerrhopilus inornatus (Boulenger, 1888)
- Gerrhopilus mcdowelli (Gelding, 1996)
- Gerrhopilus mirus (Jan, 1860)
- Gerrhopilus oligolepis (Wall, 1909)
- Gerrhopilus persephone Kraus, 2017
- Gerrhopilus tindalli (Smith, 1943)
literature
- Nicolas Vidal, Julie Marin, Marina Morini, Steve Donnellan, William R. Branch, Richard Thomas, Miguel Vences, Addison Wynn, Corinne Cruaud, S. Blair Hedges: Blindsnake evolutionary tree reveals long history on Gondwana. in: Biology Letters. Volume 6/4, pp. 558-561, The Royal Society, London 2010, doi : 10.1098 / rsbl.2010.0220 , ISSN 1744-9561 .