Melanoseps cf. ater ( Guenther , 1873)

Conradie, Werner, Bittencourt-Silva, Gabriela B., Engelbrecht, Hanlie M., Loader, Simon P., Menegon, Michele, Nanvonamuquitxo, Cristovao, Scott, Michael & Tolley, Krystal A., 2016, Exploration into the hidden world of Mozambique's sky island forests: new discoveries of reptiles and amphibians, Zoosystematics and Evolution 92 (2), pp. 163-180 : 171

Melanoseps cf. ater ( Guenther, 1873)

Material

Mt. Mabu ( PEM R21126 , 93 mm SVL, 28.6 mm TL; PEM R21127 , 121 SVL, 39.9 mm TL) .

Comments

Broadley et al. (2006) assigned the northern Mozambique specimens to Melanoseps loveridgei , while specimens from southern Malawi are referred to as Melanoseps ater . We used the key from Broadley et al. (2006) to identify the specimens based on number mid-body scale rows (24). Timberlake et al. (2012) were the first to report this species from Mt. Mabu and this was only the second record for this genus in Mozambique. Farooq and Conradie (2015) recorded Melanoseps cf. loveridgei from Mt. Namuli. This identification was tentative, as material got lost in a motor vehicle accident and could not be examined. Based on the close proximity to Mt. Mabu the Mt. Namuli record should be regarded as Melanoseps cf. ater .