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Herpetofauna from a Caatinga Area at Farias Brito Municipality, Ceará State, Northeastern Brazil

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Herpetofauna from a Caatinga Area at Farias Brito Municipality, Ceará State, Northeastern Brazil Herpetology Notes, volume 14: 135-146 (2021) (published online on 22 January 2021) Herpetofauna from a Caatinga area at Farias Brito municipality, Ceará State, Northeastern Brazil Cicero Ricardo de Oliveira1,*, Kassio Castro de Araujo1, Herivelto Faustino de Oliveira2, and Robson Waldemar Ávila1 Abstract. We present a checklist of amphibian and reptile species that occur in an area of Caatinga at Farias Brito municipality, Ceará State, Northeastern Brazil. The present study was undertaken during two seasons (dry season: August and September 2014; rainy season: February 2014 and January 2015) using visual and auditory searches. We recorded 23 anuran and 40 reptilian species, highlighting our study area as a home of high herpetofaunal richness in the Brazilian semiarid region. Our study area revealed species diversity higher than some protected areas, and almost 25% of the amphibian and 20% of the reptile species are known for the Caatinga biome. Keywords. Inventory, conservation, amphibians, reptiles Introduction rainforests and savannahs (Tabarelli and Silva, 2003). Due to its climate particularity, they operate as a natural Herpetofaunal checklists are useful tools for efficient laboratory for studies of plants, invertebrates, and environmental diagnosis and development of projects vertebrates adapted to great variations in environmental that aim species conservation (Heyer et al., 1994; Silvano conditions (Leal et al., 2005). and Segalla, 2005), being amphibians and reptiles The Caatinga herpetofauna is composed of important bioindicators of environmental disturbances approximately 242 species, with 61 amphibians and (Pough et al., 2008). Knowledge of the local faunal is 181 reptilians (Albuquerque et al., 2012; Costa and crucial to measure environmental healthiness and to set Bérnils, 2018; Segalla et al., 2019), with approximately up future conservation plans, as well as highlighting the 12% endemic species (see. Rodrigues, 2003; Freire et species with urgency for conservations actions (Peres et al., 2011). al., 2009; Guedes, 2012). Furthermore, some amphibian The starting point for a robust checklist is the choice and reptile species have been recently described for this of specific and efficient sampling techniques (Silveira et biome (e.g. Andrade et al., 2016; Carvalho et al., 2016; al., 2010), in which the species richness of each Brazilian Franco et al., 2017), which reinforces that there is still a biome is estimated according to those inventories lack of checklists for some areas from the Caatinga. (Rodrigues, 2005). Besides providing a baseline for In northeastern Brazil, the Ceará State is predominantly species preservation, these studies allow public policies covered by Caatinga and it is characterised by the aimed at biodiversity conservation (Navega-Gonçalves presence of semiarid environments (see Ab’Sáber, and Porto, 2016). 1974; Moro et al., 2015). During the last decade, several Among the Brazilian biomes, the Caatinga is composed herpetofaunal surveys were conducted in the central and of dry forests and shrubby vegetation, with enclaves of northern regions of Ceará State (e.g. Borges-Nojosa, 2007; Loebmann and Haddad, 2010; Borges-Leite et al., 2014; Santana et al., 2015; Roberto and Loebmann, 2016). Recently, an increase in herpetofaunal studies in the southern region of the state has been observed 1 Department of Biology, Pici Campus, Federal University of (e.g. Ribeiro et al., 2012; Ferreira-Silva et al., 2016; Ceará, Fortaleza - CE Zip Code 60440-900, Brazil. Mângia et al., 2018; Silva-Neta et al., 2018). The 2 Department of Biology, Regional University of Cariri, Crato herpetofaunal checklists from the southern region were - CE Zip Code 63105-000, Brazil. conducted mainly in the Bioregion of Araripe (Ribeiro * Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] et al., 2012; Ribeiro et al., 2015). Herein, we present © 2020 by Herpetology Notes. Open Access by CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. a herpetofaunal checklist from a Caatinga environment 136 Cicero Ricardo de Oliveira ������et al. at Farias Brito municipality, southern region of Ceará State, northeastern Brazil. Material and Methods Study area. Fieldwork was carried out in two Caatinga areas of Farias Brito municipality (Fig. 1), located in the south region of Ceará State (Coordinates P1 = 6.7825° S; 39.5530° W, WGS84 datum, 342 m elev., and P2 = 6.8652° S; 39. 5355° W, WGS84 datum, 302 m elev.). The region is classified as tropical with a dry season, also known as savannah climate (Lima et al., 2017). The mean rainfall is 896.5 mm/year and the predominant environment is shrubby Caatinga with Figure 1. Geographical location of Farias Brito municipality, floristic influences of Cerrado and Semideciduous Ceará State, Brazil (red star), and other sampled Caatinga Tropical Forest (Ipece, 2016). environments “stricto sincto” (black circles) in Caatinga biome (green): 1- Itapipoca, 2- Serra das almas, 3- Médio Jaguaribe, Sampling. We collected the amphibian and reptile 4- Aiuaba, 5- Bacia do Rio Salgado (Ceará State), 6- Picos, species in four campaigns by visual and auditory 7- Serra da Capivara (Piauí State), 8- Raso da Catarina, 9- searches (Crump and Scott Jr, 1994): two in the dry Nordestina (Bahia State), 10- Grota do Angico (Sergipe State), season (August and September 2014) and two during 11- Catimbau, 12- Taquaritinga, 13- Floresta, 14- Taquaritinga the rainy season (February 2014 and January 2015). (Pernambuco State), 15- São J. do Cariri, 16- Cabaceiras, 17- Voucher specimens were deposited in the herpetological Catolé do Rocha (Paraíba State), 18- Seridó, 19- João Câmara (Rio Grande do Norte State). collection of the University Regional of Cariri – URCA. Sampling was undertaken during five consecutive days by five searches in three periods: morning (07:00 to (i.e. Roberto et al., 2013; Andrade et al., 2017; Araújo et 10:00 a.m.), afternoon (03:00 to 06:00 p.m.) and night al., 2018; Frost, 2020), and reptile records (i.e. Bertoluci (06:00 to 09:00 p.m.). The sampling effort was about 900 hours/5 searches. Herpetofaunal nomenclature et al., 2009; Condez et al., 2009; Scartozzoni et al., 2009; follows Frost (2020) and Uetz et al. (2020). Loebmann and Haddad, 2010; Recoder et al., 2011; Dal The herpetofaunal conservation status was obtained Vechio et al., 2013; 2015; Guedes et al., 2014; Freitas from IUCN (2020), and the species distribution along et al., 2016; 2017; Costa and Bérnils, 2018; Uetz et al., Brazilian biomes from literature of amphibian records 2020). Figure 2. (A) Amphibian species accumulation curve recorded in Caatinga environment in the municipality of Farias Brito, Ceará State, Brazil. (B) Reptile species accumulation curve registered in Caatinga environment in Farias Brito municipality, Ceará State, Brazil. Herpetofauna from a Caatinga area at Farias Brito municipality, Brazil 137 Statistical analyses. We used the Jackknife 1 estimator were performed using the packages adespatial (Dray et to estimate the expected richness of amphibians and al., 2019), Biodiversity R (Kindt and Coe, 2005), and reptiles (Magurran and McGill, 2011), and the Berger- Vegan (Oksanen et al., 2016) for R 5.6.1 software (R Parker index (d) to measure the species dominance in Core Team, 2020). the sampled area. Thereafter, we produced a sample- based accumulation curve to measure the sampling Results effort (Fig. 2A, B). We used the Jaccard Similarity Index (J’; Magurran We recorded 588 amphibian specimens from 23 and McGill, 2011) based on presence and absence in two species distributed in 12 genera, belonging to six pairs of plots to compare the herpetofaunal composition families: Bufonidae (n = 2 spp.), Hylidae (n = 5 spp.), registered in the present study with inventories performed Leptodactylidae (n = 12 spp.), Microhylidae (n = 2 in other areas of Caatinga “stricto sensu” (Table 1), spp.), Odontophrynidae (n = 1 sp.) and Phyllomedusidae excluding species without specific identification (“gr.”, (n = 1 sp.) (Table 2; Fig. 3). The accumulation curve “aff.” and “sp.”), and considering only species with tended slightly to stabilisation (Fig. 2A), although the identification to be confirmed (“cf.”). All analyses Jackknife 1 estimator suggested the addition of five Table 1. Literature used to compare the herpetofaunal composition of Farias Brito municipality and other areas of Caatinga (stricto 1 sincto), with their respective geographical coordinates, species richness, and bibliographic references. Table 1. Sampled areas Coordinates (UTM) Richness Referencese Amphibians Farias Brito-CE -6.7825, -39.55305556 23 Present Study Aiuaba-CE -6.666667, -40.200000 20 Garda et al. (2017); Ávila et al. (2017) Médio Jaguaribe-CE -5.717805556, -38.64163889 19 Santana et al. (2015) Picos-PI -7.087722222, -41.40085556 24 Benício et al. (2015a) Bacia do Rio Salgado-CE -7.379466667, -38.64663056 23 Silva-Neta et al. (2018) Negreiros-PE -7.930833333, -39.28555556 23 Pereira et al. (2015) Seridó-RN -6.583333, -37.250000 19 Caldas et al. (2016) Itapipoca-CE -3.514733333, -39.58497222 19 Castro et al. (2018) Catolé do Rocha-PB -6.343888889, -37.74666667 17 Oliveira et al. (2018) Cabaceiras-PB -7.369444444, -36.25277778 18 Protázio et al. (2015); Cascon and Langguth (2016) São J. do Cariri-PB -7.419444444, -36.50277778 24 Vieira et al. (2009); Leite-Filho et al. (2015) Catimbau-PE -8.600000, -37.233333 21 Pedrosa et al. (2015) Raso da Catarina-BA -9.383333, -38.200000 20 Garda et al. (2013) Nordestina-BA -10.90221111, -39.42238889 13 Leite et al. (2019) Grota do Angico-SE -9.680275, -37.68391667 20 Silva (2013) Reptiles Farias Brito-CE -6.7825, -39.55305556 39 Present Study Aiuaba-CE -6.666667, -40.200000 35 Garda et al. (2017); Ávila et al. (2017) Picos-PI -7.087722222, -41.40085556 27 Benício et al. (2015b) Bacia do Rio Salgado-CE -7.379466667, -38.64663056 34 Silva-Neta et al. (2018) Negreiros-PE -7.930833333, -39.28555556 30 Pereira et al. (2015) Taquaritinga-PE -7.819722222, -36.215 25 Barbosa et al. (2018) Catimbau-PE -8.600000, -37.233333 37 Pedrosa et al. (2015) Serra da Capivara-PI -8.699 -42.59069444 28 Cavalcanti et al.
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