Abstract
Johann Ludwig Christian Gravenhorst’s herpetological collection at the Museum of Natural History, University of Wrocław included numerous important specimens of amphibians and reptiles. The majority, if not the entirety, of this collection has long been thought to be lost. However, we were able to rediscover some type specimens of lizards. The rediscovered specimens include the holotypes of Liolaemus conspersus and L. hieroglyphicus, one syntype of Callopistes maculatus (here designated as the lectotype) and two syntypes of L. lineatus (one of which is herein designated as the lectotype). Reexamination of these specimens indicates that previous synonymies proposed for L. conspersus and two syntypes of L. hieroglyphicus are problematic; furthermore, more complex taxonomic work is needed to resolve this issue. Two rediscovered syntypes of L. lineatus differ in several scalation traits and are possibly not conspecific. The type specimens of several other species of lizards from Gravenhorst’s collection (Liolaemus marmoratus, L. unicolor and two other syntypes of L. lineatus, Leiocephalus schreibersii and Chalcides viridanus) were not found and are probably lost.
Highlights
German naturalist Johann Ludwig Christian Gravenhorst (1777–1857) was the founder and first director of the Zoological Museum at the University of Wroc1aw (Zoologisches Museum der Universität Breslau, currently the Museum of Natural History)
The type specimens of these forms were usually deposited in the museum in Wroc1aw; at least half of the zoological specimens and 90% of exhibits were destroyed during the World War II, when the city was sieged and turned into Festung Breslau in 1945 (Wanat & Pokryszko, 2014)
A small amount of muscle tissue was taken from putative holotypes of Liolaemus conspersus and L. hieroglyphicus, and two specimens of Chalcides viridanus collected by Zimmer in an attempt to extract DNA
Summary
German naturalist Johann Ludwig Christian Gravenhorst (1777–1857) was the founder and first director of the Zoological Museum at the University of Wroc1aw (Zoologisches Museum der Universität Breslau, currently the Museum of Natural History). His main interests lay in entomology, beetles and, later, ichneumonid wasps (Ja1oszynski & Wanat, 2014). Like many naturalists of his time, Gravenhorst had a comprehensive knowledge of many other groups of animals During his directorship at the museum (from its founding in 1814 to Gravenhorst’s death in 1857), he acquired large collections of fishes, amphibians and reptiles from around the world, and published numerous articles on the latter two groups of vertebrates (Ja1oszynski & Wanat, 2014); How to cite this article Borczyk B, Skawinski T. The holotype of Liolaemus lemniscatus Gravenhorst, 1838, was recently redescribed (Borczyk, 2013)
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