Letheobia


Letheobia is a genus of blind snakes in the family Typhlopidae.

Geographic range

The genus is endemic to Africa.

Taxonomy

In 1869, the genus Letheobia was established by Edward Drinker Cope based primarily on two specimens of Letheobia pallida from Zanzibar, but later also including Letheobia caeca from Gabon. Wilhelm Peters, in 1874 when describing Onychocephalus lumbriciformis from Zanzibar and in 1878 Typhlops unitaeniatus from Kenya, considered Letheobia to be a subgenus. Nonetheless, in 1881, Peters selected Letheobia caeca Duméril as the type species for the genus. In 1883, Boulenger decided that at best Letheobia was a subgenus of Typhlops, and placed it as a junior synonym. Later in reconstructing Rhinotyphlops in 1974, Roux-Estève moved all of Letheobia species into Rhinotyphlops, mostly into her Groups IV, V and VI. However, molecular studies in the 2000s showed that Rhinotyphlops, as conceived by Roux-Estève, was polyphyletic, and that many if not all of Groups V and VI constituted a separate genus, for which the name Letheobia had priority. In 2007 :fr:Donald George Broadley|Broadley and Wallach formally revived the genus Letheobia. In 2013, Pyron et al. considered with some certainty that Letheobia was a sister group to the combined genera Afrotyphlops and Megatyphlops, while the three were then sister to Rhinotyphlops, and the four were the sister to Typhlops.

Species

The genus Letheobia contains the following 38 species which are recognized as being valid.
Nota bene: A binomial authority in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than Letheobia.

Etymology

The specific name, pauwelsi, is in honor of Belgian herpetologist :fr:Olivier Sylvain Gérard Pauwels|Olivier Sylvain Gérard Pauwels.