Leptotyphlopini, Stejneger, 1892

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 : 29

Tribe Leptotyphlopini , New Tribe

Type genus. Leptotyphlops Fitzinger, 1843: 24 .

Diagnosis. Members of this tribe are distinguished from the other tribes of the Subfamily Leptotyphlopinae in having a brown or pale brown (rather than white) venter. Also they are distinguished from the Tribe Myriopholini by having few middorsal scales, on average (171–387 versus 165–558), and from the Tribe Epacrophini by having a small or absent (rather than moderate) first supralabial scale (Table 2). The support for this group was 100% BP and 100% PP for the four-gene tree ( Fig. 3) and 100% BP and 100% PP for the nine-gene tree ( Fig. 4).

Content. Two genera and 27 species ( Table 1).

Distribution. The tribe is distributed throughout South Africa, extending as far north as the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the west and Somalia in the east; including Pemba Island ( Tanzania) and the Bazaruto archipelago off of Mozambique.

Remarks. This tribe comprises the former nigricans , rostratus , and scutifrons groups of " Leptotyphlops , " most recently defined ( Broadley & Broadley 1999; Broadley & Wallach 2007) by the fusion of the rostral and frontal scales as found in the scutifrons and rostratus groups (unfused in the nigricans Group and in other leptotyphlopids). However, the molecular phylogeny ( Fig. 3) shows that the nigricans Group (here represented by L. kafubi and L. nigricans ) is polyphyletic or paraphyletic with respect to the scutifrons Group, thus indicating that the fused state evolved more than one time, or evolved once and reverted to the unfused state in some species. For this reason we do not recognize species groups but instead recognize one genus ( Leptotyphlops ) for the combined members of the former nigricans and scutifrons species Groups and a second genus (described below) for the former members of the rostratus Group.