Legless lizard from Brazil conformed as new species

18/11/2008 11:51:23

November 2008. A legless lizard, Bachia oxyrhina, discovered in a remote region of Brazil earlier this year, has been described officially recognised as a new species by the scientific journal Zootaxa. The scientific study cited for the first time the lizard's scientific name.

The legless lizard was discovered in January by a group of researchers at Estação Ecológica Serra Geral do Tocantins, the second largest protected area in the Cerrado Hotspot, a savannah region in central Brazil. The group was led by Cristiano Nogueira, biodiversity analyst for Conservation International in Brazil (CI-Brasil). Another 13 species believed new to science also were found on the expedition, and the legless lizard is the first to be officially recognized.

Bachia oxyrhina has an extremely elongated body and tail, giving the impression that it has no legs. Its limbs, like other species of the Bachia genus, are rudimentary and have no locomotive function, says Nogueira. The legless lizard moves by slithering beneath the superficial layer of the sandy terrain typical of Jalapão region, the largest block of native Cerrado in the world. Its pointy nose helps it open paths through the soil, where it hunts for small bugs, termites and ants. It is this characteristic that provided its name, derived from the Latin oxy (sharp) and rhinos (nose).

Differences from snakes
Species of the Bachia genus are one of the many limbless reptiles lineages that superficially resemble snakes due to the lack of well developed legs. However, many other features differentiate most limbless lizards from snakes, as lizards generally show external ear openings and lack the extreme modifications in cranial morphology that enables snakes to ingest very large prey.

According to Nogueira, the formal description of a species in a taxonomy journal such as Zootaxa is the first step toward better understanding by the scientific community. Scientific descriptions enable researchers to create a list of the existing species in a certain area, allowing them to map out the area's biodiversity and to understand its biological importance. "All this information is crucial to the development of adequate conservation strategies. It is difficult to conserve a species or an area if you don't know it," Nogueira says.

Leading Brazilian zoologist Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues from the Universidade de São Paulo, and first author of the description of the legless lizard, says the process of recognition of a species can take many years, depending on the accumulation of basic of scientific knowledge about the group to which it belongs. In this case, however, the description took only eight months.

"Recent research with lizards of the same genus, together with the large amount of data collected on the diversity of lizards living in the Cerrado and the experience of the team of herpetologists (zoologists who study reptiles and amphibians) involved in this project, contributed to the quickness of the recognition process," says Rodrigues.

Two legless lizards discovered in 2007
The description of the legless lizard is the third one among lizards of the same genus since 2007. The Bachia micromela and the Bachia psamophila species, also found in the Cerrado of the state of Tocantins, were described last year. "These recent additions to the list of lizards that live in the Cerrado show us that we are still far from knowing the biodiversity of this biome in order to conserve it properly. This is a serious problem considering the rapid expansion of agriculture in this region," says Rodrigues. According to him, the number of new species discovered in the Cerrado, considered high compared to other regions in Brazil, indicates that numerous species might already have become extinct due to habitat destruction.

25% of Brazil's vertebrate species
Ricardo Machado, CI-Brasil's Director for the Cerrado-Pantanal Program, says that the Cerrado is home to 25 percent of all 1,300 species of vertebrates described in Brazil over the past two decades. "Because there are few studies about the biodiversity of this region, the high number of findings reveals that the Cerrado presents great potential for the discovery of new species," he says.

The Bachia oxyrhina was discovered during an expedition to Estação Ecológica Serra Geral do Tocantins, which also identified 13 other likely new species of vertebrates. Click here to read more about the expedition.

Courtesy of Conservation International.