The reptile lives in the humid piedmont forests of the Imbabura and Carchi provinces.
Echinosaura fischerorum the new species is called saurian or neotropical spiny lizard that Ecuador records. The reptile lives in the humid piedmont forests of the Imbabura and Carchi provinces, on the western slope of the Andes.
The finding was made by researchers from the Ecominga Foundation and the National Biodiversity Institute (Inabio) of the Ministry of the Environment, Water and Ecological Transition.
The lizard exhibits a distinctive pattern of large, keel-shaped dorsal scales, forming a pair of vertebral rows with two series of short, oblique paravertebral rows of protruding scales.
A pair of spiny-shaped scales are distinguished in the temporal and nuchal regions. The work provides a detailed description of the osteology of the skull and the pectoral girdle of the new species. Similarly, a new phylogenetic hypothesis is provided for the genus Echinosaura based on three mitochondrial genes and one nuclear gene.
Its name is a recognition of the work of Beat Fischer and Urs Fischer, donors who have contributed significantly to the consolidation of the Dracula Reserve in the Peñas Blancas and El Pailón sectors, which not only protect the populations of this new endemic species, but also important populations of threatened amphibians and reptiles of the Mira river basin.
The research was led by Mario H. Yánez-Muñoz from Inabio and Clauida Koch from the Alexander Koening Museum and had the collaboration of Omar Torres from the Museum of Zoology (QCAZ), Juan Reyez Puig from the Ecominga Foundation and Miguel Urgiles from Inabio. (I)
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