Two New Species of Malayotyphlops from the Northern Philippines, with Redescriptions of Malayotyphlops luzonensis (Taylor) and Malayotyphlops ruber (Boettger)
As a first step toward making sense of an infamously enigmatic and taxonomically problematic group of Philippine blind snakes, we redescribe Malayotyphlops luzonensis (Taylor, 1919) and Malayotyphlops ruber (Boettger, 1897) and clarify their taxonomic status with respect to each other and to additional phenotypically similar taxa. We also describe two other new species of Malayotyphlops from the Sierra Madre Mountain Range of northern Luzon Island, each on the basis of a single specimen. We suspect that species diversity of the typhlopid fauna of the Philippines is severely underestimated, with progress towards a comprehensive understanding of this group most hampered by a lack of sufficient comparative material available in biodiversity repositories.
