Herps

In southern Arizona and northern Sonora, the neotropical vine snake (Oxybelis aeneus) lives in temperate oak woodland, canyon riparian woodland, desert-grassland, and pine-oak woodland communities at 1160 to 1650 m elevation. Perennial plants in an oak woodland habitat in the Atascosa Mountains in the center of the Arizona distribution of the species, have strong biogeographical affinities with the grasslands and woodlands of the southwestern United States and the northern Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico.

Amphibians and reptiles were observed in the Sierra La Madera (59 species), an isolated Sky Island mountain range, and the Sierra Bacadéhuachi (30 species), the westernmost mountain range in the Sierra Madre Occidental (SMO) range in east-central Sonora. These preliminary herpetofaunas were compared with the herpetofauna of the Yécora area in eastern Sonora in the main SMO, where 92 species are known from the Río Yaqui to the Chihuahua border.

Known from only a handful of localities in the Sierra Madre Occidental of western Mexico, the Spotted Box Turtle, Terrapene nelsoni (Family Emydidae), remains one of the least known chelonian species of North America. Only at the type locality and at one site in Chihuahua have more than four specimens been recorded, most other records consisting of incidental finds or acquisition of solitary specimens. Population density, natural history, and reproductive parameters are thus not understood, and even the favored microhabitat of the species is uncertain.