Check List 21(3): 515-533, doi: 10.15560/21.3.515

DNA Barcoding reveals the first record of Villamizar’s Worm Salamander, Oedipina villamizariorum Reyes-Puig et al., 2020 (Caudata, Plethodontidae), on the former island prison Gorgona in Colombia

Ana M. Saldarriaga-Gómez^‡§, Augusto Acosta-Peña^‡|, Damián S. Pardo^¶, Darío Alarcón-Naforo^#, Esteban Betancourt^‡

‡ Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia§ Fordham University, New York, United States of America| Pontificia Universidad, Bogotá, Colombia¶ Comisión Colombiana del Océano, Bogotá, Colombia# Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia

Corresponding author: Ana M. Saldarriaga-Gómez ( asaldarriaga@fordham.edu )

Corresponding author: Esteban Betancourt ( requinonesb@unal.edu.co )

Academic editor: Luisa Diele-Viegas

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Saldarriaga-Gómez AM, Acosta-Peña A, Pardo DS, Alarcón-Naforo D, Betancourt E (2025) DNA Barcoding reveals the first record of Villamizar’s Worm Salamander, Oedipina villamizariorum Reyes-Puig et al., 2020 (Caudata, Plethodontidae), on the former island prison Gorgona in Colombia. Check List 21 (3): 515-533. https://doi.org/10.15560/21.3.515

Abstract

We document the first record of Oedipina villamizariorum Reyes-Puig et al., 2020 in Colombia, from Gorgona National Natural Park located in Guapi Municipality, Cauca department. With this record, the number of Oedipina species reported in the country rises to three, and the known distribution of O. villamizariorum is extended approximately 220 km north of its only previously known locality in Ecuador. Our research highlights the importance of combining DNA barcoding and traditional morphology to identify cryptic species.

Keywords

Distribution, herpetofauna diversity, molecular markers, Neotropics, Pacific region