We present new records of the Indian Sand Snake Psammophis condanarus from southern India, where its existence has remained doubtful till date. Our records are based on both live and preserved voucher specimens that are illustrated and described here. We furnish distribution records of this species from two sites belonging to two different ecoregions in southern India—Tirupati in the Eastern Ghats and Hospete in the Deccan plateau. Our work highlights the obscurity of certain, large-growing, diurnal land snakes that have as yet managed to evade the attention of field biologists largely due to a lack of field surveys in certain ecoregions.
Keywords: Distribution, literature records, snake, southern India.
Image 3. Coluber condanarus. Reproduction of the lectotype’s drawing in plate 27 of Russell (1796)
S.R. Ganesh, Vivek Sharma and M. Bubesh Guptha. 2017. Records of the Indian Sand Snake Psammophis condanarus (Merrem, 1820) (Reptilia: Lamprophiidae) in southern India. Journal of Threatened Taxa. 9(7); 10453-10458. DOI: 10.11609/jott.3468.9.7.10453-10458
كيف تحصل على مدونة جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات من هنا
شاهد قناة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على اليوتيوب لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
تعرف على ترتيب مواضيع منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات (حتى لا تختلط عليك الامور) من هنا
ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
African snake-eaters of the genus Polemon are cryptic, fossorial snakes that mainly inhabit the forests of central, eastern, and western Africa. Molecular results from a previous study demonstrated that Polemon christyi is not monophyletic—two distinct lineages were recovered from Uganda (the type locality) and southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Genetic data indicated differences in sequence divergence and encoded amino acids between these lineages. Based on these molecular differences and diagnostic differences in morphology, we describe the lineage from southeastern DRC as a new species. Literature records indicate that it likely occurs in adjacent Tanzania and Zambia. It is the first species of Polemon to be described in over 70 years.
the holotype of Polemon ater, PEM R20734 (254 mm SVL), subadult male from Fungurume, Lualaba Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in life.
photo: Colin R. Tilbury
Polemon ater, new species
Black Snake-eater
Etymology.— Derived from the Latin atrum in reference to the grayish black or black dorsal and ventral coloration that is present in all known specimens of P. ater.
Frank Portillo, William R. Branch, Colin R. Tilbury, Zoltán T. Nagy, Daniel F. Hughes, Chifundera Kusamba, Wandege M. Muninga, Mwenebatu M. Aristote, Mathias Behangana and Eli Greenbaum. 2019. A Cryptic New Species of Polemon (Squamata: Lamprophiidae, Aparallactinae) from the Miombo Woodlands of Central and East Africa. Copeia.107(1); 22-36. DOI: 10.1643/CH-18-098
كيف تحصل على مدونة جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات من هنا
شاهد قناة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على اليوتيوب لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
تعرف على ترتيب مواضيع منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات (حتى لا تختلط عليك الامور) من هنا
ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
We describe a new stiletto snake, Atractaspis, from western Liberia and southeastern Guinea. The new species shares with morphologically similar western African Atractaspis species, A. reticulata and A. corpulenta, the fusion of the 2nd infralabial with the inframaxillary. From A. corpulenta the new species differs by a more slender body (276–288 ventrals and 19 or 20 dorsal scale rows versus 178–208 ventrals with 23–29 dorsal scale rows), a divided anal plate and divided subcaudal scales (both non-divided in A. corpulenta). The new species differs from most A. reticulata by having 19 or 20 dorsal scale rows at midbody (versus 21–23, rarely 19), and a lower ventral count (276–288 versus 304–370). The new species thus has a relatively longer tail: snout-vent-length / tail-length in the female holotype (15.7) and paratype (21.5) versus a mean of 23.6 in seven female A. reticulata. The new Atractaspis likely is endemic to the western part of the Upper Guinea forest zone and thus adds to the uniqueness of this diverse and threatened biogeographic region.
Figure 1. Life coloration of the Atractaspis branchisp. n. holotype (ZMB 88529).
Figure 3. Holotype of Atractaspis branchisp. n. (ZMB 88529) 1 head scalation in dorsal (a), lateral (b), and ventral (c) views 2 ct-scan of skull in dorsal (a), lateral (b), and ventral (c) views; lower jaw virtually removed; green: pterygoid, yellow: palatine, orange: vomer. Scale bar: 1 mm.
Atractaspis branchi sp. n.
Diagnosis: External morphology, skull anatomy and molecular data (see below) clearly supports the position within the genus Atractaspis. The new species can be only mistaken morphologically with species from Laurent’s (1950) section ‘D’, his reticulata-group. In particular it differs from all other species of the genus, except A. reticulata and A. corpulenta (including the West African A. c. leucura), by the fusion of the 2nd infralabial with the inframaxillary. From A. corpulenta it differs by a much higher ventral count (276–288 vs 178–208), lower number of dorsal scale rows at midbody (19 vs 23–29), divided anal plate and subcaudals, and the absence of a white colored tail tip (present in A. c. leucura); from A. reticulata it can be distinguished by a lower ventral count (276–288 vs 304–370), and 19 (the paratype has mostly 19 scale rows, but 20 at midbody) dorsal scales rows at midbody (19 scale rows present in the A. reticulata holotype, other vouchers having 21–23 rows) (Table 1). The new species further differs from A. corpulenta by a more slender body and from A. reticulata by a longer tail compared to body length.
Figure 6. Type locality of Atractaspis branchisp. n. in north-western Liberia. The holotype specimen was found at night. It was moving along the steep slope on the left bank of the small creek.
Figure 7. Localities of Atractaspis branchisp. n. and A. reticulata ssp. Records are based on museum specimens, literature and database (GBIF) records; large closed symbols represent the type localities of the different taxa, stars: A. branchi sp. n., circles: A. reticulata records without reference to subspecies; triangles: A. r. reticulata; quadrats: A. r. heterochilus; diamonds: A. r. brieni; country borders indicted as white lines; background of map: major biomes based on Olson et al. (2001).
Natural history: We found the holotype at night. It was slowly moving along the steep slope of the bank of a small rocky creek in primary lowland evergreen rainforest (Fig. 6). When handled, the snake first tried to hide its head below body loops; the head was bend down at an almost right angle and with fangs partly visible outside of the mouth. In this head position, the snake repeatedly tried to strike. Either it tried to move slowly away from the human observers or it abruptly coiled and uncoiled, often jumping distances equaling almost its entire body length, similar to wolf snakes of the genus Lycophidion (Rödel et al. 1995; Greene 1997). The two snakes from south-eastern Guinea were collected in plantations of banana, manioc and coffee, which were planted under the few remaining high trees of the former forest. No other data on biology and ecology of the new species are known.
Distribution: So far the new species is known from the type locality and two additional sites in south-eastern Guinea. These latter two sites are about 27 km apart (Fig. 7).
Etymology: We name this new snake to honor our recently deceased friend and colleague, William Roy “Bill” Branch, for his outstanding contributions to African herpetology. MOR and OSGP are particularly pleased to name the species in memory of Bill. We remember our outstanding field trips with him, unforgettable discussions with a large portion of special humor, and his friendship. The dedication of this species of stiletto snake to Bill is particularly appropriate. After Bill turned from cancer research to herpetology (see “William R. Branch” in Li Vigni 2013), the subject of his first herpetological research, on the serotaxonomy and hemipeneal morphology of stiletto snakes, was presented in two contributions at a symposium of herpetology and ichthyology in Kruger National Park in 1975 (Branch 1975a, b). As the vernacular name, we suggest Branch’s Stiletto Snake.
Mark-Oliver Rödel, Christoph Kucharzewski, Kristin Mahlow, Laurent Chirio, Olivier Pauwels, Piero Carlino, Gordon Sambolah and Julian Glos. 2019. A New Stiletto Snake (Lamprophiidae, Atractaspidinae, Atractaspis) from Liberia and Guinea, West Africa. Zoosystematics and Evolution. 95(1): 107-123. DOI: 10.3897/zse.95.31488
كيف تحصل على مدونة جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات من هنا
شاهد قناة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على اليوتيوب لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
تعرف على ترتيب مواضيع منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات (حتى لا تختلط عليك الامور) من هنا
ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
