Amphisbaena trachura Cope , 1885 ( Amphisbaenia : Amphisbaenidae ) : new record for the northeast of Argentina

We present a new record of Amphisbaena trachura (Squamata: Amphisbaenidae) for the northeast of Corrientes province, Argentina. Seven specimens (five females and two males) were identified using morphological and meristic characters. The specimens were found under Eucalyptus sp. logs on 6 December 2014 and 3 March 2015, in General Alvear Department, Corrientes.

Amphisbaenians are worm-like Squamata distributed mainly in South America, Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.Also, a few genera are limited to North America, Northern Africa, Middle East and the Mediterranean region (Vidal et al. 2008).
Amphisbaena trachura Cope, 1885 is a medium-sized amphisbaenian, characterized by four pre-cloacal pores and the presence of tuberculate segments in the tail tip.This species is currently distributed in Brazil (São Paulo to Rio Grande do Sul states), the northern region of Uruguay, west region of Paraguay and the extreme northeast of Argentina (Gans 1966;Montero and Terol 1999).It was first considered part of the darwinii complex identified by Gans (1966).Later, Vanzolini (2002) considered it to be a species based on meristic characters, and Gans (2005) accepted this classification.
In Argentina, Cei (1993) and Montero (1994Montero ( , 1996) ) cited A. trachura for Misiones province, whereas Abdala et al. (2012) did not mention its presence in this country.After analyzing specimens from Misiones and Entre Ríos provinces, Perez et al. (2012) identified them as A. trachura.Nevertheless, this species was not included by Avila et al. (2013) in the recent checklist of lizards and amphisbaenians of Argentina.
In the present study we report a recent new record of A. trachura from Corrientes province in northeast Argentina.
We examined seven specimens collected by hand from field sampling using active random searches.2).This region is phytogeographically inserted in Campos district in the Paranaense Province (Cabrera 1976).
We analyzed the external morphological characters and the meristic data following Gans and Alexander (1962), Gans (1966), Vanzolini (2002) and Perez et al. (2012).The measurements were taken with 0.01 mm precision digital calipers.Voucher specimens are housed at the Herpetological Collection of the Universidad Nacional del Nordeste in Corrientes (UNNEC).
We identified the sex of each specimen by examination of gonads through a ventral incision.Five of the seven poorly known species in Argentina, and confirms its presence in Corrientes province.This new record is ca.650 km west of its type locality in Montenegro, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (29°41′19″ S, 051°27′40″ W; Figure 2), and is important because the species had not been recently found in Argentina.We consider that additional surveys are needed to better know the real geographical distribution of A. trachura in this country.specimens were female and two were male.All the external morphological characters and the meristic data used for the identification are summarized in Table 1.The specimens were found semi-buried in a wet microhabitat under large rests of Eucalyptus sp.logs (Figure 3).This record contributes to the knowledge of the geographical distribution of Amphisbaena trachura, a  (Gans 1966;Lema et al. 1980;Vieira et al. 1980;Gomes and Krause 1982;Lema et al. 1984;Lema 1994;Montero 1994Montero , 1996;;Montero and Terol 1999;Borges-Martins et al. 2007;Barbo and Sawaya 2008;Marques et al. 2009;Quintela et al. 2011aQuintela et al. , 2011b;;Perez et al. 2012

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Sampling area, located in a private field near Alvear locality, General Alvear department, Corrientes province, Argentina.