A new distributional record for the Martin del Campo’s Arboreal Alligator Lizard (Abronia martindelcampoi) with comments on the biogeography of arboreal Alligator-lizards in the Sierra Madre del Sur, Mexico

ABSTRACT

Alligator lizards of the genus Abronia are a clade of arboreal and terrestrial squamates distributed throughout much of the highlands of Mexico and Central America. Here, we report a new record of the Mexican endemic A. martindelcampoi that represents the easternmost limit of the species and the lowest known elevational record. We briefly discuss the biogeographical hypotheses that have been proposed in the past concerning this and other related genera.

KEYWORDS:

• Geographic distribution
• endemism
• taxonomy
• Mexican transition zone

Acknowledgments

We thank Rufino Santos Bibiano, Emmanuel A. Cantú and Gael Palacios Carbajal for their invaluable assistance during the fieldwork. Fieldwork was conducted under a collecting permit issued by Dirección General de Vida Silvestre, Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (#FAUT-0015). Oscar Flores-Villela provided access to museum records and databases that helped to properly address the geographic distribution of the species addressed in this contribution. Victor Hugo Colín-Martínez and Leticia Ochoa-Ochoa helped with cataloguing of specimens at the MZFC. Jonathan A. Campbell, Israel Solano-Zavaleta and Brett O. Butler provided helpful suggestions and interesting comments that greatly improved the quality of this contribution.

Disclosure statement

This work deals with species subject to illegal traffic, exact coordinates might be obtained upon direct request to the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the CONACYT [CVU 857990].