In 1869, the genus Letheobia was established by Edward Drinker Cope based primarily on two specimens of Letheobia pallida from Zanzibar, but later also including Letheobia caeca (originally Onychocephalus cæcusDuméril, 1856) from Gabon. Wilhelm Peters, in 1874 when describing Onychocephalus lumbriciformis from Zanzibar and in 1878 Typhlops unitaeniatus from Kenya, considered Letheobia to be a subgenus. Nonetheless, in 1881, Peters selected Letheobia caeca Duméril as the type species for the genus. In 1883, Boulenger decided that at best Letheobia was a subgenus of Typhlops, and placed it as a junior synonym. Later in reconstructing Rhinotyphlops in 1974, Roux-Estève moved all of Letheobia species into Rhinotyphlops, mostly into her Groups IV, V and VI. However, molecular studies in the 2000s showed that Rhinotyphlops, as conceived by Roux-Estève (1974), was polyphyletic, and that many if not all of Groups V and VI constituted a separate genus, for which the name Letheobia had priority.[2] In 2007 Broadley and Wallach formally revived the genus Letheobia. In 2013, Pyron et al. considered with some certainty that Letheobia was a sister group to the combined genera Afrotyphlops and Megatyphlops, while the three were then sister to Rhinotyphlops, and the four were the sister to Typhlops.[3]
Species
The genus Letheobia contains the following 37 species which are recognized as being valid.[4]
^ abWallach, Van (2005) "Letheobia pauwelsi, a new species of blindsnake from Gabon (Serpentes: Typhlopidae)." African Journal of Herpetology54 (1): 85-91.
^Broadley, Donald G.; Wallach, Van (2007). "A review of East and Central African species of Letheobia Cope, revived from the synonymy of Rhinotyphlops Fitzinger, with descriptions of five new species (Serpentes: Typhlopidae)". Zootaxa. 1515: 31–68. Abstract
Cope ED (1868). "Observations on REPTILES of the Old World. Art. II". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia20: 316-323. (Letheobia, new genus, p. 322).
Roux-Estève R (1974). "Révision systématique des Typhlopidae d'Afrique. Reptilia. Serpentes ". Mémoires du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle Nouvelle Série – Série A, Zoologie, Paris 87: 1-313. (in French).
