Reptilia , Colubridae , Helicops angulatus : distribution extension and rediscovery in the state of Ceará

The genus Helicops comprises 17 species distributed east of the Andes, in Venezuela, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Guiana, French Guiana, Suriname, and Trinidad (Peters and Orejas-Miranda 1970; Cunha and Nascimento 1993; Bérnils et al. 2007; Uetz 2008). Ten species have been recorded from Brazil: Helicops angulatus, H. carinicaudus, H. gomesi, H. hagmanni, H. infrataeniatus, H. leopardinus, H. modestus, H. polylepis, H. tapajonicus and H. trivittatus (SBH 2008).

For state of Ceará, there is a historical record of H. angulatus in a species list deposited in Rocha Museum, municipality of Fortaleza (Gomes 1918).However, in 1915 Francisco Dias da Rocha sent this specimen to Instituto Butantan in São Paulo, but no collection data came with it other than it was collected in Ceará.Thus, this record was considered uncertain by Gomes (1918), who reported only that this specimen was from the northern region of Brazil.Thirty years later, Rocha (1948) published a list of the reptiles from Ceará, and cited H. angulatus, without reference to a specific locality for the occurrence of the species, neither to a voucher specimen.It is possible that was the same specimen sent to the Instituto Butantan in 1915.
In 5 May 2008, a specimen of Helicops angulatus (dorsal scale rows 19; 119 ventral scales, 79 subcaudals; snout-vent length (SVL) 320 mm; tail-length (TL) 164 mm) was collected manually in a small pond inside a sugar cane and rice plantation, in the Chapada do Araripe, municipality of Crato (07°13'18.24"S, 39°23'42.40"W; 407m), southern region of the state of Ceará, Brazil (Figure 1).It is a very disturbed site, and in the past comprised the humid forests in the slopes of the Chapada do Araripe, today the only small source of water in the area came from the Granjeiro spring located in the gallery forest in the region.The specimen was collected, fixed in 10% formalin for 48 hours, and conserved in 70% ethanol.After this procedure the specimen was deposited in the Laboratory of Zoology at the Universidade Regional do Cariri -URCA (LZ-URCA 492 -Figure 2).
The Chapada do Araripe region is inserted in the Caatinga biome, Northeastern Brazil, and it is composed with savannas vegetation in the plateau, caatinga dry forest and humid forest in the slopes.The region is considered an area of extreme priority for the conservation of the Caatinga biome (MMA 2007), containing a high biodiversity of flora and fauna (see Coelho and Silva 1996;Borges-Nojosa and Caramaschi 2003), including the critically endangered bird, the Araripe Manakin Antilophia bookermanni.Until very recently the only species of Helicops recorded in the Caatinga biome was Helicops leopardinus (Rodrigues 2003).Our finding represents the first vouchered record of H. angulatus for the Caatinga biome and for the state of Ceará, and extends the species' range ca.502 km west from nearest knowledge locality, the Mata do Buraquinho, a remnants Atlantic forest in the municipality of João Pessoa, state of Paraíba (7°08'42" S, 34°51' 54" W) (Santana et al. 2008).
Therefore, the present record should be considered as a confirmation for the species in the state of Ceará, as previously reported (Rocha 1948).Nevertheless, this record brings the first precise and documented (voucher specimen LZ-URCA 492) information of distribution of the species in the state of Ceará and in the entire Caatinga biome. ----------------

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Distribution recognized for Helicops angulatus in Brazilian territory (A); Map showing the new distribution record for the state of Ceará, municipality of Crato, northeastern Brazil (B).