DOI: 10.15468/zwf9kf
title: Further records of a poorly-known insular endemic skink Lipinia macrotympanum (Stoliczka, 1873) (Squamata: Scincidae)

description: This dataset contains the digitized treatments in Plazi based on the original journal article Gokulakrishnan, G., Sivaperuman, C., Chandramouli, S. R. (2020): Further records of a poorly-known insular endemic skink Lipinia macrotympanum (Stoliczka, 1873) (Squamata: Scincidae). Bonn zoological Bulletin 69 (1): 117-122, DOI: 10.20363/BZB-2020.69.1.117, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.20363/bzb-2020.69.1.117Abstract. The little-known, insular endemic skink Lipinia macrotympanum (Stoliczka, 1873) was recorded recently from two new localities in Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve (GNBR) further south of the previously known localities. Based on these observations, new data on morphology, natural history and distribution are presented and it is suggested to be considered as an endangered species based on the IUCN assessment criteria.Key words. Lipinia macrotympanum, new locality records, distribution map, Nicobar archipelago.The skink genus Lipinia Gray, 1845 is represented by 32 species which are distributed from the Nicobar Islands in the West to Papua New Guinea in the east (Uetz et al. 2019). Of these, the westernmost representative of the genus, Lipinia macrotympanum was described originally by Stoliczka (1873) as Mocoa macrotympanum from “South Andaman, on a sandy beach in Macpherson’s Straits”. Later, Biswas & Sanyal (1977) reported a specimen of this species erroneously identified as “ Lygosoma quadrivittatum ” (now Lipinia quadrivittata) from Campbell Bay, Great Nicobar. Subsequently, Das (1997) reported the rediscovery of Lipinia macrotympanum based on his new collection of a specimen from Pulo Ulon, Little Nicobar and the specimen reported by Biswas & Sanyal (1977). Ever since this report, Lipinia macrotympanum was never recorded from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Herein, we report on two specimens of Lipinia macrotympanum based on our field observations and collected specimens. One of the individuals reported here (ZSI/ANRC/T/3709) was illustrated by Rangasamy et al. (2019) in their list of herpetofauna of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.Faunal surveys spanning 10–15 days were conducted on islands of the Nicobar archipelago intermittently between 2015 and 2018. Two of three specimens of L. macrotympanum recorded during these surveys were collected, preserved and deposited in the holdings of the Zoological Survey of India, Andaman and Nicobar Regional Centre (ZSI ANRC). The collected specimens were measured with a vernier caliper and a Leica stereomicroscope to the nearest 0.1 mm. The following characters were recorded: Snout tip to vent (SVL), trunk length from axilla to groin (AG), tail length from vent to tail tip (TL), head length (HL), head width at jaw angle (HW), head depth (HD), eye diameter (ED), tympanum diameter (TYD), eye-nostril distance (EN), eye-snout distance (ES), eye-tympanum distance (ETY), forelimb length (FLL), hindlimb length (HLL), inclusive of femur length (from groin to knee) (FEL) and tibia length (from knee to heel) (TBL), finger lengths (F1–F5), toe lengths (T1–T5), midbody scale-rows (MSR), nuchals (NU), supralabials (SL), infralabials (IL), ventrals (V), supraoculars (SO), prefrontals (PRF), subdigital lamellae under toe IV. Sex of the specimens was determined by examining the cloacal region for the presence of hemipenes. Geographic coordinates of the areas of its occurrence were recorded with a GPS and mapped with ARC MAP 10. Terminologies for color descriptions follow Poyarkov et al. (2019).