New record of Cercosaura ocellata Wagler , 1830 ( Squamata , Gymnophthalmidae ) in northeastern Brazil , with a distribution map for the species in South America

Herein, we provide a new record of Cercosaura ocellata Wagler, 1830 in the Atlantic Forest biome, northeastern Brazil, and a distribution map for the species in South America. The new record was in Extremoz municipality, state of Rio Grande do Norte, filling a gap in the known geographic distribution of the species between the states of Ceará and Pernambuco. DOI: 10.15560/10.6.1531 Figure 1. Known geographic distribution of Cercosaura ocellata in South America. Brazil is shaded a darker color for emphasis. N o t e s o N G e o G r a p h ic D is t r ib u t io N

Caramaschi 2003).Besides Brazil, there are also published records for the species in Argentina (Tedesco and Aguirre 1998), Bolivia (Doan and Lamar 2012), Colombia (Doan and Lamar 2012), French Guiana (Doan and Lamar 2012), Guyana (Cole et al. 2013), Peru (Dixon and Soini 1986;Ávila-Pires 1995;Duellman 2005), Suriname (Hoogmoed 1973;Ávila-Pires 1995) and Venezuela (Doan and Lamar 2012).The type-locality of C. ocellata was suggested by The family Gymnophthalmidae is composed of small lizards (less than 60 mm in adult snout-vent length), distributed from southern Central America to southern South America east of the Andes (Pellegrino et al. 2001;Vitt and Caldwell 2014).Gymnophthalmids occur in lowland rain forests (Amazon, Atlantic Forest), high-elevation habitats (tropical forests close to the Andes), temperate grasslands (Pampa in southern South America), and savanna-like habitats, including Cerrado in central Brazil and the semiarid Caatinga in northeastern Brazil (Vitt and Caldwell 2014).The family is composed of approximately 244 species (Uetz and Hošek 2014).
The genus Cercosaura Wagler, 1830 was redefined after a systematic review established by Doan (2003), which synonymized Pantodactylus and Prionodactylus with Cercosaura, including 11 species in this genus (Doan 2003).After other systematic reviews, some species were synonymized and others were described, and currently there are 13 species in the genus (Doan and Lamar 2012; Uetz and Hošek 2014), six with occurrence recorded for Brazil (Bérnils and Costa 2012).The species Cercosaura ocellata Wagler, 1830 is diagnosed by a cylindrical body, tail long, round in cross section, limbs well developed, pentadactyl, with all digits clawed, and quadrangular dorsal scales in transverse and longitudinal rows; it currently contains three subspecies (Ávila-Pires 1995).
Cercosaura ocellata is widely distributed in South America (Figure 1), with known records in different biomes, including the Amazon Forest (Vanzolini 1972(Vanzolini , 1986;;Ávila-Pires 1995;Macedo et al. 2008;Ávila-Pires et al. 2009Ávila-Pires et al. , 2010;;Mendez-Pinto and Tello 2010;Bernarde et al. 2011;Mendez-Pinto and Souza 2011), Cerrado (Gainsbury and Colli 2003;Shepard 2007;Uetanabaro et al. 2007;Vaz-Silva et al. 2007;Valdujo et al. 2009;Recoder et al. 2011;Novelli et al. 2012), Pampa (Santos et al. 2005), Atlantic Forest (Couto-Ferreira et al. 2011;Oliveira and Moura 2013) and Caatinga (Borjes-Norjosa and New record of Cercosaura ocellata Wagler, 1830 (Squamata, Gymnophthalmidae) in northeastern Brazil, with a distribution map for the species in South America Herein, we provide a new record for Cercosaura ocellata in the Atlantic Forest biome, northeastern Brazil.Additionally, we provide a distribution map for the species in South America.To build the map, we made an extensive search in the literature in six online bibliographic databases (Web of Science, JSTOR, Scielo, Scopus, Google Scholar), looking for records of the species.Additionally, we also obtained records in the Vertnet database (http://www.vertnet.org/index.html).All localities with geographic coordinates are in the Appendix.We georeferenced some localities where geographical coordinates were not provided by the authors.
The new record was in Centro Tecnológico de Aquicultura (CTA), Extremoz municipality, state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (5.7° S, 35.31° W; Figure 1).The CTA belongs to the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, and is an area designed for shrimp research.The vegetation of the CTA area was originally typical of a mangrove ecosystem, but much of its environment was degraded and turned into breeding grounds for shrimp.The remaining vegetation is composed of small shrubs, with small freshwater ponds.This new record fills a gap in the known geographic distribution of C. ocellata (Figure 1) between the states of Ceará (640 km east of Planalto de Ibiapaba) and Pernambuco (267 km north of Mata de Tejipió).The low number of records for this cryptic species in northeastern Brazil is undoubtedly a result of the low number of herpetological surveys in this region.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Known geographic distribution of Cercosaura ocellata in South America.Brazil is shaded a darker color for emphasis.
During a survey in the area on 11 May 2013, one of us (RFDS) collected an adult individual of Cercosaura ocellata ocellata (30.4 mm SVL; Figure 2) at night (approximately 19:00 h) above an aquatic plant at the edge of a freshwater pond.The specimen was collected under permanent permit number 12734-1, issued by Sisbio/ICMBio, and was deposited in the Herpetological Collection of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (CHBEZ 3984).