Chamaeleo dilepis Leach, 1819

Conradie, Werner, Keates, Chad, Verburgt, Luke, Baptista, Ninda L., Harvey, James, Júlio, Timóteo & Neef, Götz, 2022, Contributions to the herpetofauna of the Angolan Okavango-Cuando-Zambezi River drainages. Part 2: Lizards (Sauria), chelonians, and crocodiles, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation (e 322) 16 (2), pp. 181-214 : 190

Chamaeleo dilepis Leach, 1819 complex Flap-necked Chameleon ( Fig. 8 , Map 7)

Material (5 specimens): PEM R 23322, Cuito River source lake, -12.68935° 18.36012°, 1,435 m asl; PEM R 27391, Luvu River camp, -13.71200° 21.83538°, 1,082 m asl; PEM R 27389–90, INBAC: WC-6789, Lungwebungu River camp, -12.58439° 18.66748°, 1,297 m asl. Additional observations: Quembo River, walk back from small waterfall, -13.52987° 19.28340°, 1,242 m asl; Quembo River right side tributary (Micongo River) past village, -13.51877° 19.28486°, 1,248 m asl; Camp at side tributary (Luandai River) of the Luanguinga River, -13.70885° 21.26234°, 1,116 m asl; Cuelei River west of Menongue, -14.70511° 17.38014°, 1,392 m asl; Chitembo, -12.78792° 16.75706°, 1,693 m asl. Description: All specimens presented a small, reduced occipital flap. Largest female: 97.1 + 84.0 mm ( PEM R 27391); largest male: 88.5 + 95.0 mm ( PEM R 23322). Habitat and natural history notes: All adult specimens were encountered sleeping at night in larger trees up to a height of 2 m, while hatchlings were found very low on scrub below 30 cm height. A gravid female (photographed and released) was found at the Cuito River source in February. Comment: Although the casques and occipital lobes of our material seem very reduced (a feature diagnostic of C. gracilis ), the tail is long and the dorsal keel is formed by a single row of enlarged tubercles (double in C. anchietae ), conforming to typical C. dilepis features ( Tilbury 2010, 2018). Chameleons are very poorly represented in Angola, with only two genera and five species recorded ( Marques et al. 2018). Of these, C. dilepis is the most common and widespread ( Marques et al. 2018), although only a few records are known from the southeast ( Conradie et al. 2016). The new records presented here fill the sampling gap in the distribution of this species in Angola. Numerous subspecies and variations have been described in this group over the years ( Uetz et al. 2022), but a recent large-scale phylogenetic study ( Main et al. 2022) identified only three species-level lineages that do not fully agree with previously identified subspecies. Of these lineages, two occur in Angola, but due to the lack of topotypic material and the fact that the recognized lineages are incongruent with previously described subspecies, further studies are recommended for this taxon. We therefore refer to our collected material by the binominal name.

Figures

Fig. 8. Adult female Chamaeleo dilepis (not collected) from lower Quembo River. Photo by Werner Conradie.