ECUADOR CHECKLIST 



INTRODUCTION 



There has been a renewed interest in the herpetology of Ecuador 

 over the past twenty years, initiated largely through the efforts of 

 the late Dr. James A. Peters. During this period large collections of 

 Ecuadorian material have been made by a number of workers and this 

 material is now deposited in North American collections, notably the 

 University of Kansas Museum of Natural History, the United States 

 National Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Comparative Zoo- 

 logy. These collections have shown that the Ecuadorian herpetofauna is 

 exceptionally rich, and until now a complete checklist has not been 

 aval lable . 



As is the case with any checklist, this is very much a work-in- 

 progress. Of the 682 taxa recorded herein from Ecuador, 136 have been 

 described since 1970, and I am aware of many more species awaiting 

 description. There is no shortage of basic exploratory work yet to be 

 done. Although most of the major habitats and regions have been sam- 

 pled, there still remain large blank areas on collecting maps that will 

 no doubt turn up many surprises. I have made efforts to check out 

 suspicious literature records, but in some cases species may be 

 included on this list due to either misidenti f icat ions or incorrect 

 locality data. 



I chose not to include information on distribution in this list 

 for two reasons. The distributions of many species are poorly known, 

 and many species appear to have extremely restricted ranges. A 

 simplified notation of distribution would be misleading because it 

 would imply that distributions are well known even when they are not. 

 Also, many of the older records, both in the literature and in col- 

 lections, are suspect, and if these taxa are not well represented in 

 recent collections it is not possible to make realistic estimations of 

 distribution. I have made every effort to eliminate these, but some no 

 doubt remain. Field work in Ecuador has characteristically been 

 exploratory, and only a few localities have been sampled adequately. 

 More faunal work concentrating on specific areas is needed, and this 

 work is probably best done by resident naturalists. 



The bibliography is a current (to March 1982) and fairly compre- 

 hensive guide to the systematic literature on the Ecuadorian herpeto- 

 fauna. It contains all references to original descriptions of 

 Ecuadorian taxa, as well as ecological and systematic papers that 

 mention Ecuadorian specimens. This latter coverage is incomplete, but I 

 believe that the bibliography includes most references likely to be use- 

 ful to any student of the Ecuadorian herpetofauna. I relied heavily on 

 Vanzolini's bibliography of South American reptiles (1978) for locating 

 references on reptiles, and his comments on many of the older papers 

 should be consulted before any great effort is made to locate obscure 

 papers . 



I hope that publication of this list and bibliography will stimu- 

 late interest in the enormously diverse Ecuadorian herpetofauna. In 

 many respects Ecuador is a microcosm of tropical South America, and 

 students of amphibian and reptile biology are sure to find much of 

 interest there. 



