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The Presence of Mesoclemmys raniceps and Mesoclemmys nasuta in Venezuela andComments on the Type Locality of Hydraspis maculata (Chelidae)Author(s): Gilson A. Rivas, Tito R. Barros, Flavio de Barros Molina, Pedro Trebbau, and Peter C.H.PritchardSource: Chelonian Conservation and Biology, 14(1):104-107.Published By: Chelonian Research FoundationDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2744/ccab-14-01-104-107.1URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.2744/ccab-14-01-104-107.1

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Chelonian Conservation and Biology, 2015, 14(1): 104–107g 2015 Chelonian Research Foundation

The Presence of Mesoclemmys raniceps andMesoclemmys nasuta in Venezuela and

Comments on the Type Locality of Hydraspismaculata (Chelidae)

GILSON A. RIVAS1,*, TITO R. BARROS

1,

FLAVIO DE Barros MOLINA2,3, PEDRO TREBBAU

4,

AND PETER C.H. PRITCHARD5

1Museo de Biologıa, Facultad Experimental de Ciencias,Universidad del Zulia, Apartado Postal 526, Maracaibo 4011,Venezuela [anolis30@hotmail.com; porosaurus@gmail.com];

2Museu de Zoologia, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Av. Nazare 481,CEP 04263-000, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brasil;

3Universidade de Santo Amaro, Campus I, Rua Eneas de SiqueiraNeto 340, CEP 04829-300, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brasil

[fbmolina@uol.com.br];4Ex presidente de la Fundacion Nacional de Parques Zoologicos yAcuarios (FUNPZA), Apartado Postal 68387, Caracas, Venezuela

[trebbaup@gmail.com];5Chelonian Research Institute, Oviedo, Florida 32765 USA

[chelonianri@gmail.com]*Corresponding author

ABSTRACT. – Among the freshwater turtles recorded inVenezuela, 2 of the most enigmatic species for theirscarcity and misleading distributional information areMesoclemmys raniceps and Mesoclemmys nasuta. Basedon the literature, only 3 records pertaining to these 2species could confirm that they occur in Venezuela;however, a detailed study of the evidence demonstratesthat the type of Hydraspis maculata (a synonym of M.raniceps), was not specifically collected in Venezuela andthe other 2 records were an adult female of Mesoclemmyszuliae and a juvenile Mesoclemmys heliostemma. Ourconclusion is that no records of M. nasuta or M. ranicepsare known from Venezuela.

According to Pritchard and Trebbau (1984), 2 sub-

species of Phrynops nasutus are known in Venezuela from

3 specimens. Among these putative P. nasutus, one referable

to Phrynops nasutus nasutus (now a synonym of Meso-clemmys nasuta) was a live captive specimen kept in the

Parque Zoologico El Pinar, in Caracas (Fig. 1). A second

specimen was preserved and deposited in the Museum of

Comparative Zoology at Harvard University (MCZ 58099,

Fig. 2) and was assigned to Phrynops nasutus wermuthi(now a synonym of Mesoclemmys raniceps), and the third,

the type specimen of Hydraspis maculata housed in the

Natural History Museum in London (NHMUK1946.1.22.14,

Fig. 3) was not assigned to any subspecies of P. nasutus.

Some authors have recently discussed the lack of

documentation of M. nasuta in Venezuela (Barrio-Amoros

and Narbaiza 2008; Rivas et al. 2012); however, there are no

mentions of M. raniceps. On the other hand, Rojas-Runjaic

et al. (2011) recorded the latter from the upper basin of the

Orinoco River in Venezuela, although the report seems to

have been based on literature review.

In 1987, Bour and Pauler resurrected Phrynops ranicepsand considered P. n. wermuthi to be a junior synonym of this

species, a decision that has been accepted by most authors

(e.g., Iverson 1992; Soini 1996). Bour and Zaher (2005)

developed a new taxonomic arrangement that placed both

P. nasutus and P. raniceps (as well as 8 other species) in the

genus Mesoclemmys. Current knowledge of the distribution

of Mesoclemmys considers M. nasuta to be restricted to

French Guiana and Surinam (Bour and Pauler 1987; McCord

et al. 2001; Bour and Zaher 2005) and M. raniceps to have

a broad geographic range that includes Brazil, Bolivia, Peru,

Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela (Iverson 1992; McCord

et al. 2001; Bour and Zaher 2005; Rueda-Almonacid et al.

2007; Turtle Taxonomy Working Group 2014).

The specimen previously identified as P. n. nasutus that

was kept alive in the Parque Zoologico El Pinar in Caracas

(Fig. 1), with the locality of origin unknown, was illustrated

in Pritchard and Trebbbau (1984:plates 33a–b) and has been

reidentified by us to be an adult female Mesoclemmys zuliae.

That specimen differs from M. nasuta (character of the latter

in parentheses) mainly by having a triangular intergular scute,

almost as wide as long (pentagonal, with convex anterior side;

much narrower than long); the dorsum of the head gray with

a black stripe from the snout through the eye to the rear of

head (uniform chestnut brown to black, without a stripe from

the snout through the eye to the rear of head); and the throat

uniformly pale (dark with pale edges). Interestingly, the

description of M. zuliae by Pritchard and Trebbau (1984) was

based in part on a captive specimen found in a zoo called

Parque Sur in Maracaibo, Venezuela. It is possible that an

individual of M. zuliae was carried to the Zoologico El Pinar

in Caracas in the same way that another individual was

carried to the Maracaibo Zoo.

The second specimen (MCZ 58099, Fig. 2), a juve-

nile from ‘‘Rio Orinoco, Venezuela’’, was identified by

A. Rhodin (see Pritchard and Trebbau 1984, 132) as P. n.wermuthi (now M. raniceps; see above). However, we had

doubts that MCZ 58099 is a specimen of M. raniceps, because

it could be a specimen of Mesoclemmys heliostemma,a morphologically similar, recently described species that

inhabits the Amazon River basin and the upper Orinoco in

southern Venezuela (McCord et al. 2001; Molina et al. 2012).

To investigate this matter further, we compared our data for

MCZ 58099 with the data obtained by Molina et al. (2012) to

distinguish between M. heliostemma and M. raniceps. Our

results (see Table 1) show that MCZ 58099 is morpholog-

ically more similar to M. heliostemma than to M. raniceps.

Two specific diagnostic characters are head width, which is

not as wide as it is in M. raniceps, and shell height, which is

smaller than it is in M. raniceps. The head width:carapace

length ratio is 0.30 (0.34 in similar-sized M. raniceps and 0.29

104 CHELONIAN CONSERVATION AND BIOLOGY, Volume 14, Number 1 – 2015

in similar-sized M. heliostemma) and shell height:carapace

length ratio is 0.30 (0.34 in similar-sized M. raniceps and

0.28 in similar-sized M. heliostemma). Juveniles of the 2

species have different head color patterns, but unfortunately,

the skin over the head of MCZ 58099 was almost completely

removed for skull preparation. In spite of this, it is possible to

see light-colored scales on the small piece of skin left intact

behind the left tympanum, another diagnostic character for

M. heliostemma.

The third specimen, the holotype of H. maculata(NHMUK 1946.1.22.14, Fig. 3), was described by John

Edward Gray (Gray 1873a). In the short description of

Figure 2. Juvenile of Mesoclemmys heliostemma from Venezuela (MCZ 58099) in dorsal (left) and ventral (right) views.The individual came from an unspecified locality in southern Venezuela (‘‘Orinoco, Venezuela’’). Arrow indicates the pre-sence of light scales behind the left tympanum. Photo: Jonathan Woodward.

Figure 1. Adult female of Mesoclemmys zuliae that was maintained alive in Parque Zoologico El Pinar. This individual appears inPritchard and Trebbau (1984:plates 33a–b) identified as Phrynops nasutus nasutus (a synonym of Mesoclemmys nasuta), in which theprinting of this photograph was very dark. In the same book, the illustrator Giorgio Voltolina painted this specimen with a reddish brownhead (see plate 8). We consider this error to be a subjective interpretation of the artist, who probably based his illustration on the dark,underexposed photograph.

NOTES AND FIELD REPORTS 105

H. maculata Gray 1873, the type locality was listed as

‘‘Tropical America’’. He also referred to it in another

publication (Gray 1873b) in which he mentioned that the type

specimen was a juvenile individual from South America. His

text reads:

3. Hydraspis maculata, Gray.

a. Animal, in spirits, young.

H. maculata, Gray. Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. 1873.

S. America. Mus. Utrecht. 66, 8, 14, 233.

Hydraspis maculata was later synonymized with

Rhinemys nasuta by Boulenger (1889), and almost

a century later Bour and Pauler (1987) placed it in the

list of synonyms of P. nasutus (now M. nasuta, see

above). This was followed by McCord et al. (2001) and

even the most recent edition of the taxonomic list of the

chelonians of the world (Turtle Taxonomy Working

Group 2014); however, Bour and Zaher (2005) reidenti-

fied the specimen as M. raniceps, based on morphology

and head color pattern, particularly the short intergular in

comparison to the medial femoral sulcus and the presence

of a black stripe on each side of the head, extending from

the snout through the eyes and finishing at the back of the

tympani (Fig. 3), both important diagnostic characters

distinguishing M. raniceps from M. nasuta (Bour and

Pauler 1987). The inclusion of ‘‘Mus Utrecht’’ in data

provided by Gray (1873b) mistakenly led Bour and Pauler

(1987) to think that the species was native to Suriname,

formerly Dutch Guiana; thus, the inclusion of H. maculata

as a synonym of M. nasuta (R. Bour, pers. comm.,September 2014).

The type of H. maculata cannot be attributed to M.heliostemma (characters of this species in parentheses)

because it does not possess the facial band typical of the

juvenile individual of this species (presence of a yellow or

orange V-shaped facial band in life; pale in preserved

specimens), for the presence of a black stripe on each side

of the head, from the snout through the eyes to the rear of

head (without black stripes on the sides of the head or

reticulations over the head), for the light tympani (black

in all stages), and the throat with light margins (throat

completely dark colored). We agree with Bour and Zaher

(2005) in that the type of H. maculata must be included in

the synonymy of M. raniceps.

Pritchard and Trebbau (1984) reported the type locality

of H. maculata as ‘‘Venezuela’’, but this was in error since

Gray (1873a, 1873b) explicitly stated ‘‘Tropical America’’

and ‘‘S[outh] America’’, not ‘‘Venezuela’’. According to

Bour and Pauler (1987), this mistake was attributable to

a typographical error made by Boulenger (1889), who

misplaced the species name H. maculata in the text and,

therefore, wrongfully linked the species to Venezuela

(R. Bour, pers. comm., September 2014).

According to this historical review and the new

interpretation of the available data, we consider that

there are currently no specimens referable to M. ranicepsfrom Venezuela. The only species of Mesoclemmysdefinitely present in Venezuela are Mesoclemmys gibba(apparently a common species), M. zuliae (an endemic

Figure 3. Holotype of Hydraspis maculata NHMUK 1946.1.22.14, in dorsal (left) and ventral (right) views. Arrow indicates thepresence of a black stripe on each side of the head, typical of the juvenile individual of Mesoclemmys raniceps. Photo: Patrick Campbell.

106 CHELONIAN CONSERVATION AND BIOLOGY, Volume 14, Number 1 – 2015

species), and M. heliostemma (known in Venezuela from

two specimens, the holotype and the MCZ specimen,

MCZ 58099).

Acknowledgments. — We are especially grateful to

Patrick Campbell and Jose Rosado for the pictures and

information of the specimens housed in the Natural

History Museum and Museum of Comparative Zoology,

respectively. A special thanks to Sibille Pritchard for her

hospitality during the visit of G.A.R. and T.R.B. to the

Chelonian Research Institute (Oviedo, Florida) in March

2014, and to Roger Bour, Philippe J.R. Kok, Angel L.

Viloria, and an anonymous reviewer for considerably

improving the manuscript.

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Table 1. Measurements of a juvenile individual of Mesoclem-mys heliostemma (MCZ 58099) from the Orinoco River,Venezuela. Measurements follow Molina et al. (2012).

Character Length or width (mm)

Straight-line carapace length 58.3Carapace width 47.1Shell height 17.3Head width (dry skull) 17.5Parietal width 2.811th marginal scute width 5.712th marginal scute width 10.9Intergular scute width 8.7Gular scute width 5.4

NOTES AND FIELD REPORTS 107