A new species of skink from the Guadeloupe Archipelago (Squamata, Mabuyidae, Mabuya)

Abstract

Article registration: http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:23EF46DB-3895-4047-A71B-71273CE7F92D. Abstract A new species of lizard of the genus Mabuya is described from a small island in the Guadeloupe Archipelago: Terre de Bas, Îles de la Petite Terre. Mabuya parviterrae sp. nov. is allied with the other four species of Mabuya from Guadeloupe. However, it differs in scalation, coloration, and (where available) DNA sequence. Of the nine named species in the genus, only M. dominicana (from Dominica), M. desiradae (from La Désirade), and M. parviterrae sp. nov. have escaped decimation and possible extinction by the Small Indian Mongoose, Urva auropunctata. The latter two species of skinks are critically endangered, being threatened by the Black Rat (Rattus rattus) and degraded habitat that has not recovered from early land use. The Petite Terre Skink probably has one of the smallest distributions of a vertebrate species. The species consists of approximately 50 individuals living primarily in a dry stone wall of less than 500 square meters in extent.

On the taxonomic recognition of skinks from the Guadeloupe Archipelago (Squamata, Mabuyidae, Mabuya)

“…Recently, Miralles et al (2017) revisited the taxonomy of skinks in the Guadeloupe Archipelago with new sequence data from seven specimens representing two of the six named species (M. desiradae and M. parviterrae), including three individuals from Les Saintes (two from Terre-de-Haut and one from Terre-de-Bas) that are unassigned to a species. They combined those data with published sequence data (Hedges et al 2016) from 12 specimens of those species (two from La Désirade and ten from Îles de la Petite Terre), concluding that the molecular evidence supports the recognition of a single species (Mabuya desiradae) from the Guadeloupe Archipelago instead of six species. Oddly, their resulting tree of relevance (Miralles et al 2017: Fig.…”

“…Skinks of the lizard family Mabuyidae occur throughout the Caribbean region and are especially diverse in the Guadeloupe Archipelago, where six named species occur, all endemic to individual islands: Capitellum mariagalantae, Mabuya cochonae, M. desiradae, M. grandisterrae, M. guadeloupae, and M. parviterrae (Hedges & Conn 2012;Hedges et al 2016). They are critically endangered species primarily because of predation by introduced mammals, especially the Small Indian Mongoose, Urva auropunctata.…”

“…Only two of the species, M. desiradae (from La Désirade) and M. parviterrae (from Terre de Bas, Îles de la Petite Terre), have been observed in recent years. The species M. parviterrae is particularly threatened, with an estimated 50 individuals surviving primarily in a single stone wall (Hedges et al 2016). Additional surviving populations of skinks in the Guadeloupe Archipelago, not yet assigned to a species, occur on the small islets of Les Saintes, specifically from Terre-de-Haut and Terre-de-Bas (Angin & Gomès 2015;Barré et al 2016).…”

“…The Hedges & Conn (2012) study revealed a hidden diversity of skink species in the Western Hemisphere and especially ISSN 2333ISSN -2468 caribbean herpetology article on Caribbean islands. As part of that work, they described five of the six known species in the Guadeloupe Archipelago, with M. parviterrae described later (Hedges et al 2016).…”

“…Most (seven) of the 11 new sequences contributed by Miralles et al (2017) (their Table 1, in bold) were from a conserved gene, 12S rRNA, with only four new cytochrome b sequences. Because our data (Hedges et al 2016) were from the more relevant cytochrome b gene, we corrected this imbalance by adding new 12S rRNA sequences for our 12 samples in order to have an alignment of 17 individuals for both genes.…”