Epictinae Hedges, Adalsteinsson, & Branch

Adalsteinsson, Solny A., Branch, William R., Trape, Sébastien, Vitt, Laurie J. & Hedges, S. Blair, 2009, Molecular phylogeny, classification, and biogeography of snakes of the Family Leptotyphlopidae (Reptilia, Squamata), Zootaxa 2244, pp. 1-50 : 13-15

Subfamily Epictinae Hedges, Adalsteinsson, & Branch , New Subfamily

Type genus. Epictia Gray, 1845: 139 .

Diagnosis. Compared with other subfamilies, members of this subfamily tend to have short, thick tails, and the fewest subcaudal scales: relative tail length is 2.1–11.5% total length versus 4.1–18.9% in the Leptotyphlopinae ; tail shape is 1.3–6.1 versus 3.2–11.7; and subcaudals number 8–30 versus 12–58 in the Leptotyphlopinae (Table 2; Fig. 5). All leptotyphlopids with more than two supralabials and more than 14 midbody scale rows are in this subfamily. The support for this group was 44% BP and 0% PP for the fourgene tree ( Fig. 3) and 94% BP and 100% PP for the nine-gene tree ( Fig. 4).

Content. Two tribes, three subtribes, eight genera, and 62 species ( Table 1).

Distribution. The subfamily is distributed in the New World and in equatorial Africa. In the New World it ranges from North America (California, Utah, and Kansas) south through Middle and South America (exclusive of the high Andes) to Uruguay and Argentina on the Atlantic side. It also occurs on San Salvador Island ( Bahamas), Hispaniola, the Lesser Antilles, Cozumel Island ( Mexico), Islas de Bahia and Swan Islands ( Honduras), San Andres and Providencia Islands ( Colombia), Bonaire, Margarita Islands, and Trinidad. It also occurs in equatorial Africa, from southern Senegal, Guinea , and Bioko Island in the west to Ethiopia in the east.

Remarks. The inclusion of six African species (all but one from West Africa) in this otherwise New World group ( Table 1; Figs. 3–4) was surprising, and was not found in morphological analyses of visceral and other data ( Wallach 1998). Nonetheless, the unusually high scale row count (16) of Rhinoleptus has been recorded in two other New World genera in this subfamily, Mitophis n. gen and Tetracheilostoma (Table 2). Also, the West African members of Epictinae have relatively short and thick tails, low subcaudal counts, and high supralabial counts as in New World Epictinae but in contrast to other Old World leptotyphlopids (Subfamily Leptotyphlopinae ).