Omar Torres-Carvajal; Simón E. Lobos

“ The specific epithet viridiceps is an adjective derived from the Latin words “viridis” and “ceps”, which mean “green” and “head”, respectively. It refers to the distinctive bright green coloration of the dorsal and ventral aspects of the head of Alopoglossus viridiceps sp. n.
Phylogenetic relationships.
Of the 596 nucleotide characters included in our analysis 290 were constant, 70 parsimony uninformative, and 236 were parsimony informative. Selected models of evolution were 012013+I+G+F, TPM2uf+I+G, and 010220+I+G+F for ND4 partitions codon 1, 2, and 3, respectively. ”

“ Total genomic DNA was digested and extracted from liver or muscle tissue using a guanidinium isothiocyanate extraction protocol. Tissue samples were first mixed with Proteinase K and lysis buffer and digested overnight prior to extraction. ”

“ All dorsal and lateral head scales juxtaposed. Interparietal and parietals with lateral ridges, other dorsal head scales smooth. Mental trapezoidal, anterior margin nearly forming a semicircle. Postmental irregularly heptagonal, wider than long. Four infralabials, third one longest and below center of eye. One postinfralabial. Three pairs of chin shields, first two in contact medially and with infralabials; third one in contact medially but separated from infralabials. Third pair of chin shields separated from gulars by two transverse rows of scales. ”

“ Color in life of holotype
(Fig. 1) . Dorsal background uniformly dark brown with a wide light brown vertebral stripe extending from occiput onto tail; vertebral stripe wider anteriorly; dorsal surface of head bright metallic green medially (rostral, frontonasal, prefrontals, frontal and frontoparietals) and dark brown laterally (supraoculars and supratemporals) , with a lateral bright green stripe on each side extending posteriorly from the border between the loreal and the first supraocular, over the superciliaries, to the lateral border of the parietal ”