Quantifying morphology has become increasingly popular with the advent of widely available high-powered computing. Orientation patch count rotated (OPCR) is an important measurement of dental surface complexity and has been shown to relate to diet, with carnivores possessing simple teeth and herbivores exhibiting complex dentitions. This method, however, has primarily been applied to mammals with comparatively little research focusing on dentigerous reptiles. Three methods are currently used to measure dental complexity (Surfer Manipulator, molaR, and MorphoTester), and the comparability of these methods remains untested in saurian datasets. Here, we test for differences among the three dental complexity methods using a dataset comprising lepidosaur and crocodylian teeth. Additionally, we seek to test the hypothesis that phenotypic dental complexity is related to dietary ecology using the molaR and MorphoTester OPCR methods. We find that Surfer Manipulator and 3D-OPCR methods (molaR and MorphoTester) generate different complexities, with molaR and MorphoTester consistently producing higher complexity values. The relationship between diet and dental complexity was recovered using molaR and MorphoTester, with carnivores possessing simple teeth and herbivores exhibiting significantly more-complex teeth, but this trend was not as distinct as when using Surfer Manipulator. Dental complexities were highly dependent on model preparation, in particular the triangle count of each 3D model, with surfaces that possess a greater number of faces exhibiting higher complexities. We present a series of recommendations that will help guide future studies of nonmammalian dentitions. Ultimately, 3D-OPCR methods are a fruitful area of research and represent a relatively untapped avenue of quantitative herpetology.

Wildlife tourism, including tourism involving large predators, is a rapidly growing industry that can generate many conservation and economic benefits. Monetary values can be derived for populations of large predators, and even individuals, on the basis of how much money tourists spend to see and interact with these awe-inspiring animals, but valuation studies only exist for a few groups of species. To help fill this gap we quantified the monetary value of crocodilians that are the focus of a wildlife tourism business in South America, the first time such a value has been calculated for crocodilians. We also compared the monetary values we derived with the monetary values of other crocodilians harvested in the hunting and farming industries during the same time period (2009–2014). We found mean minimum and maximum gross values of individual crocodilians per year as part of wildlife tourism were $422.00 USD and $566.67 USD, respectively, both higher than the mean gross value of individual crocodilians per year across hunting and farming industries ($300.29 USD). Individual crocodilians that were recaptured multiple times as part of wildlife tourism activities reached a peak value of $2700.00 USD. Thus, our study demonstrates that wildlife tourism can create substantial monetary incentives for local communities that coexist with crocodilians to work toward conservation goals. We conclude that wildlife tourism focused on crocodilians should be viewed as part of a larger strategy for conserving threatened populations, one that may include partners in the farming and hunting industries as well.

Intensification and expansion of agriculture is one of the most pressing concerns for biodiversity conservation. Amphibian and reptile communities can be particularly sensitive to land-use change; therefore, understanding how land use and agricultural practices influence these communities in areas under increasing agricultural pressure is prudent. Over 10 yr, we sampled amphibian and reptile communities in and around 18 man-made ponds set within an agricultural/forest matrix on a military installation in western Tennessee. Ponds had either cattle access or were cattle restricted and had different surrounding land uses (forest, pasture, row crops, and industrial development). We used Akaike information criterion, corrected (AIC_c), model selection and nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) to assess how land-cover and pond characteristics influence amphibian and reptile richness, diversity, and community structure. Our results indicate that, despite reduced water quality, amphibian diversity was higher in ponds with cattle access, though this is likely influenced by surrounding forest, pasture, and row-crop cover. Pond permanence was important in shaping amphibian community structure and is a key factor in determining amphibian richness. We did not find any link between land cover and cattle access on reptile richness or diversity, though reptile community structure was influenced by cattle access, pasture, and row-crop cover.

Artificial cover objects (ACOs) are known to attract small terrestrial vertebrates, but the actual parameters that attract species to ACOs can vary across geographic regions and climates. For this study ACOs were placed in coastal sage scrub and grassland habitats in southern California and surveyed weekly for small terrestrial vertebrates over a 4-yr period. We observed 1643 individuals of 34 taxa during 143 survey sessions totaling 16,312 ACO days. Overall species richness and abundances under ACOs were highest from February to April. Our results showed that the probability of encountering a reptile under an ACO was highest in February and March under large wooden ACOs containing moist soil, when temperatures under the ACO were relatively mild, and when minimum air temperatures were low. At the community level, encounter probabilities for small mammals were highest for large wooden ACOs and ACOs with low soil moisture, with several species differences. Amphibians of three species were only captured in low numbers primarily under wooden ACOs from November to March. Use of ACOs in research and monitoring is an inexpensive and simple way to document and capture a wide variety of small terrestrial vertebrates. Species richness and abundance can be maximized over short periods using ACOs and can be equally important for long-term monitoring, particularly once the factors that make ACO use effective for small terrestrial vertebrates of a certain region have been investigated.

Here, we describe a new species of the genus Lepidophyma (Xantusiidae) from the Veracruzan biotic province of western Chiapas and adjacent Tabasco. The new species was discovered in a phylogenetic study performed by previous workers, who found that this species was the sister taxon to a clade composed of Lepidophyma lipetzi as the sister taxon to Lepidophyma reticulatum and Lepidophyma flavimaculatum. However, the new species is morphologically most similar to L. flavimaculatum, a widely distributed taxon with which the new species was previously confused. The new species inhabits tropical deciduous and tropical evergreen forest, montane cloud forest, and anthropic environments such as pasture–tropical forest borders and agroecosystems between 70 and 1100 m of elevation. The new species increases the number of species described in the genus to 22.