Scolecomorphidae
| Tropical caecilians | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Amphibia |
| Order: | Gymnophiona |
| Family: | Scolecomorphidae Taylor, 1969 |
| Genera | |
The Scolecomorphidae are the family of tropical caecilians (Frost) or African caecilians (ITIS). They are found in Cameroon in West Africa, and Malawi and Tanzania in East Africa. Caecilians are legless amphibians which superficially resemble worms or snakes.
Scolecomorphids have only vestigial eyes, which are attached to the base of a pair of tentacles underneath the snout. Unlike other caecilians, they have only primary annuli; these are grooves running incompletely around the body, giving the animal a segmented appearance. All other caecilians have a complex pattern of grooves, with secondary or tertiary annuli present. Also uniquely amongst tetrapods, the scolecomorphids lack a stapes bone in the middle ear.[1]
At least some species of scolecomorphids give birth to live young, retaining the eggs inside the females' bodies until they hatch into fully formed offspring, without the presence of a free-living larval stage.[1]
Taxonomy
Just five species of scolecomorphids are known, grouped into two genera, as follows:
Family Scolecomorphidae
- Genus Crotaphatrema (Nussbaum, 1985).
- C. bornmuelleri (Werner, 1899), Bornmuller’s caecilian, Cameroon
- C. lamottei (Nussbaum, 1981), Mont Oku caecilian, Cameroon
- C. tchabalmbaboensis (Lawson, 2000), Cameroon
- Genus Scolecomorphus (Boulenger, 1883)
- S. kirkii (Boulenger, 1883), Lake Tanganyika caecilian, East Africa
- S. uluguruensis ( Barbour and Loveridge, 1928), Nyingwa caecilian, Tanzania
- S. vittatus ((Boulenger, 1895), banded caecilian, Tanzania (moved to the Caeciliidae family in 2006) [2]
References
- Nussbaum, Ronald A. and Mark Wilkinson (1989). "On the Classification and Phylogeny of Caecilians." Herpetological Monographs, (3), 1-42
- San Mauro, Diego; David J. Gower; Oommen V. Oommen; Mark Wilkinson; Rafael Zardoya (November 2004). "Phylogeny of caecilian amphibians (Gymnophiona) based on complete mitochondrial genomes and nuclear RAG1". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 33 (2): 413–427. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2004.05.014. PMID 15336675.
- San Mauro, Diego; Miguel Vences; Marina Alcobendas; Rafael Zardoya; Axel Meyer (May 2005). "Initial diversification of living amphibians predated the breakup of Pangaea". American Naturalist 165 (5): 590–599. doi:10.1086/429523. PMID 15795855.
- San Mauro, Diego; David J. Gower; Tim Massingham; Mark Wilkinson; Rafael Zardoya; James A. Cotton (August 2009). "Experimental design in caecilian systematics: phylogenetic information of mitochondrial genomes and nuclear rag1". Systematic Biology 58 (4): 425–438. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syp043. PMID 20525595.
- Frost, Darrel R. 2004. Amphibian Species of the World: an Online Reference. Version 3.0 (22 August, 2004). Electronic Database accessible at http://research.amnh.org/herpetology/amphibia/index.php. American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA
- AmphibiaWeb: Information on amphibian biology and conservation. [web application]. 2004. Berkeley, California: AmphibiaWeb. Available: http://amphibiaweb.org/. Retrieved 26 August 2004