Herpetological Update from Arno Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands

A visit to Arno Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in July 2016 revealed several reptile records of interest, including the first vouchered country record of the gecko Gehyra insulensis (Girard, 1857) and the first record of the blindsnake Indotyphlops braminus (Daudin, 1803) for this atoll. Furthermore, multiple species of Emoia were observed to co-occur on small islets, illustrating their ability to finely divide habitat resources. We also include some previously unreported records for Arno Atoll based on specimens in museum collections. While our brief research period (ca. 40 person-hours) on four islands of this atoll presents a very limited snapshot of reptile distributions, it indicates that a significant amount of research still needs to be conducted to achieve a more complete understanding of the reptile fauna on Marshallese atolls.