New amphibian and reptile county records from the lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, USA.

Authors: C. S. Adam, T. J. Hibbits, T. A. Campbell

This report includes 11 new county records from the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas that are the result of these recent survey efforts. Although reptile and amphibian species have been thoroughly documented in the area, especially along the Rio Grande, distributional gaps exist in species’ ranges due to the lack of access to large tracts of private ranchlands. In May 2013, the East Foundation formed a partnership with researchers from Texas A&M University, establishing an Assessment of Terrestrial Vertebrate Biodiversity and Scientific Collections project. This project allowed access to 250,000 acres across four counties
(Jim Hogg, Kenedy, Starr, and Willacy counties) and three of these four counties have previously received little herpetofaunal attention. Our main task was to determine species distributions within and across the various habitat types of the region, and to increase the knowledge of biodiversity in this area.

Suggested Citation