Tropical caecilians
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Amphibia Order: Gymnophiona Family: Scolecomorphidae Taylor, 1969
Genera
Crotaphatrema Scolecomorphus

Scolecomorphidae is the family of tropical caecilians (Frost) or African caecilians (ITIS). They are found in Cameroon in west Africa, and Malawi and Tanzania in east Africa. Caecilians are legless amphibians which superficially resemble worms or snakes.

Scolecomorphids have only vestigial eyes, which are attached to the base of a pair of tentacles underneath the snout. Unlike other caecilians, they have only primary annuli; these are grooves running incompletely around the body, giving the animal a segmented appearance. All other caecilians have a complex pattern of grooves, with secondary or tertiary annuli present. Also uniquely amongst caecilians, the scolecomorphids lack a stapes bone in the middle ear.¹

At least some species of scolecomorphid give birth to live young, retaining the eggs inside the female's body until they hatch into fully formed offspring, without the presence of a free-living larval stage.¹

Taxonomy

There are just five known species of scolecomorphid, grouped into two genera, as follows:

Family Scolecomorphidae

• Genus Crotaphatrema (Nussbaum, 1985).
  • Crotaphatrema bornmuelleri (Werner, 1899), "Bornmuller’s Caecilian," Cameroon.
  • Crotaphatrema lamottei (Nussbaum, 1981), "Mont Oku Caecilian," Cameroon.
  • Crotaphatrema tchabalmbaboensis (Lawson, 2000), Cameroon.
• Genus Scolecomorphus (Boulenger, 1883)
  • Scolecomorphus kirkii (Boulenger, 1883), "Lake Tanganyika Caecilian," East Africa.
  • Scolecomorphus uluguruensis ( Barbour and Loveridge, 1928), "Nyingwa Caecilian," Tanzania.
  • Scolecomorphus vittatus ((Boulenger, 1895), "Banded Caecilian," Tanzania.

References

• Nussbaum, Ronald A. and Mark Wilkinson (1989). "On the Classification and Phylogeny of Caecilians." Herpetological Monographs, (3), 1-42
• San Mauro, Diego; David J. Gower, Oommen V. Oommen, Mark Wilkinson and Rafael Zardoya (November 2004). "Phylogeny of caecilian amphibians (Gymnophiona) based on complete mitochondrial genomes and nuclear RAG1". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 33: 413–427. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2004.05.014. 
• San Mauro, Diego; Miguel Vences, Marina Alcobendas, Rafael Zardoya and Axel Meyer (May 2005). "Initial diversification of living amphibians predated the breakup of Pangaea" (^{dead link} – ^{Scholar search}). American Naturalist 165: 590–599. doi:10.1086/429523, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AN/journal/issues/v165n5/40546/40546.html. 
• Frost, Darrel R. 2004. Amphibian Species of the World: an Online Reference. Version 3.0 (22 August, 2004). Electronic Database accessible at http://research.amnh.org/herpetology/amphibia/index.php. American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA
• AmphibiaWeb: Information on amphibian biology and conservation. [web application]. 2004. Berkeley, California: AmphibiaWeb. Available: http://amphibiaweb.org/. Retrieved 26 August 2004