Dermophis Peters, 1880

Class: Amphibia > Order: Gymnophiona > Family: Dermophiidae > Genus: Dermophis
7 species

Dermophis Peters, 1880 "1879", Monatsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin, 1879: 937. Type species: Siphonops mexicanus Duméril and Bibron, 1841, by subsequent designation of Noble, 1924, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 49: 305.

English Names

Mexican Caecilians (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 23).

Neotropical Caecilians (Liner and Casas-Andreu, 2008, Herpetol. Circ., 38: 6).

Distribution

Southern Mexico to northwestern Colombia.

Comment

Savage and Wake, 1972, Copeia, 1972: 680-695, revised this genus and considered its distribution. Wake, 1980, Herpetologica, 36: 244-256, discussed variation in taxonomic characters. Savage, 2002, Amph. Rept. Costa Rica: 116-120, provided accounts for the species of Costa Rica. Wilkinson and Nussbaum, 2006, In Exbrayat (ed.), Reprod. Biol. Phylog. Gymnophiona: 49, 63, diagnosed the taxon and suggested that Dermophis and Gymnopis are closest relatives on the basis of morphological and reproductive similarity, but that the monophyly of either taxon remains undocumented. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583 (see comment in Amphibia record) on the basis of molecular evidence consistent with the monophyly of Gymopis + DermophisKöhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 30–32, provided a key to the species of Central America. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 30–32, provided a brief summary of natural history, a key to the species of Central America, and range maps and photographs of the species. San Mauro, Gower, Müller, Loader, Zardoya, Nussbaum, and Wilkinson, 2014, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 73: 183, recovered Gymnophis as paraphyletic with respect to Dermophis mexicanus (exemplars being Gymnopis two MVZ specimens of nominal "Gymnopis multiplicata" of which the vouchers were not available for identification verification). So, the authors left it as an open question. Undaunted by this Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 270, placed Dermophis into the synonymy of Gymnopis without further investigation into the identification of terminals. As science is thin soup and is not followed here. 

Contained taxa (7 sp.):

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