INTRODUCTION 



The distribution of amphibians and reptiles is incompletely docijmented, 

 consequencely, national, regional or local list of species, genera or 

 families are scarce but highly desirable. Recent effort of some 

 Venezuelan biologists have begun to correct this lack of distributional 

 data. La Marca (1997. Los Vertebrados Actuales y Fosiles de Venezuela. 

 Museo de Cienc. y Tecnol . Merida. Pp 298) and Pefaur (1992. Smiths. 

 Herpetol. Info. Serv. , 89:1-54) gave complete list of species of 

 amphibians and reptiles but did not provide distribution data; Pritchard 

 and Trebbau (1984. The Turtles of Venezuela. SSAR Contrib. Herpetol., 

 2:1-414) offered distributional maps for turtles and tortoises. La Marca 

 (1992. Catalogo Taxonomico, Biogeograf ico y Bibliograf ico de las Ranas de 

 Venezuela. Cuad. Geog. Univ. Los Andes, Merida, 9:1-197) provided data on 

 frogs and toads, and Lancini and Kornacker (1989. Die Schlangen von 

 Venezuela. Verlag Armitano Edit., Caracas. Pp. 381) only on snakes. Our 

 goal is to document the distribution of herpetofauna of the state of 

 Falcon. 



Falcon lies in northwestern Venezuela and is an area (24800 kmM of 

 extensive arid and semiarid coastal habits. It also contains moderately 

 high, mountains between 830-2000 m) . Falcon borders the Caribbean sea on 

 the north. Lake of Maracaibo drainage on the west, and the coastal range 

 on the southeast. Each region has a distinct ecological and climatic 

 regime, and components of influences the distribution of the 

 herpetofauna. Moreover, the geological ties the Falcon fauna with areas 

 as distant as Guyanan Shield (Audemard. 1997. Abran Paso, 2{7):31-32). 

 Other checklist of amphibians and reptiles are available, but they do 

 not covered the entire region or the entire herpetofauna (Bisbal, 1990. 

 Acta Cient. Venez., 41:177-185; Rivero-Blanco & Dixon, 1979. Monog. Mus . 

 Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas, 7:281-298; Roux, 1927. Verh. Nat. Ges . Basel, 

 38:251-261; Shreve, 1947. Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard, 99:519-537). 



This checklist contains 125 ta.xa (see Table 1), collected or 

 reported from the state of Falcon through December 1997. Each specific 

 locality is reported within the smallest political entity, "Municipio", 

 of Falcon (Atlas Practice de Venezuela. 1997. N° 13. See Table 2). These 

 Municipios are included to avoid confusions with geographic homonyms 

 within the state. When a locality cannot be placed confidence within a 

 "Municipio" or location is uncertain, that is noted by a ("?") . The 

 localities are based on vouchers and explicit Falcon record from the 

 literature. We use the Habitats terminology of Huber and Alarcon (1988. 

 Mapa de Vegetacion de Venezuela. 1:2.000.000. Ediciones Armitano, 

 Caracas ) . 



We also include a list of species of amphibians and reptiles that 

 might occur within the state of Falcon because their distribution place 

 them in a bordering state. We further list species previously reported 

 from Falcon but they are now either synonymies, or their known occurrence 

 is not near the borders of Falcon. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



During field trips and/or laboratory work we received valuable assistance 

 from Jaime Aranguren, Alberto Arends, Agustin Cedeno, Domingo Daal, 

 Angela Martino, Pedro Palencia and Leo Yagua. Many other individuals 

 have contributed: Erendira Granadillo, Luis David and Pablo Mijares, 

 Jean-Marc Hero, Diana Lopez, Margarita Lampo, Jesus Manzanilla, Fernando 

 Sanchez, Michael Schmit and his allied. Dirk Thielen, Edgar Wefer, 

 Nathaly Westdorp, Lizl Westdorp, Robert Wingfield, Jose Luis Yrausquin, 



