A new species of green pit vipers of the genus Trimeresurus Lacépède, 1804 is described from the lowlands of western Arunachal Pradesh state of India. The new species, Trimeresurus salazar, is a member of the subgenus Trimeresurus, a relationship deduced contingent on two mitochondrial genes, 16S and ND4, and recovered as sister to Trimeresurus septentrionalis Kramer, 1977. The new species differs from the latter in bearing an orange to reddish stripe running from the lower border of the eye to the posterior part of the head in males, higher number of pterygoid and dentary teeth, and a short, bilobed hemipenis. Description of the new species and T. arunachalensis Captain, Deepak, Pandit, Bhatt & Athreya, 2019 from northeastern India in a span of less than one year highlights the need for dedicated surveys to document biodiversity across northeastern India.

A new species of snail-eating snakes of the genus Pareas Wagler, 1830 is described from the eastern Himalayas. The species Pareas kaduri sp. nov. differs from all known species of the genus in bearing the following suite of characters: SVL 455–550 mm, TaL/TL 0.184–0.207, brown dorsum with black transverse bands throughout the body, 15 dorsal scale rows throughout the body and mid-dorsal vertebral scale rows enlarged, 8 rows keeled in males, loreal not touching orbit, ventrals 160–183, subcaudals 65–70 in males, 52 in one female specimen, hemipenis short, unilobed and 6–7 maxillary teeth. Molecular data for mitochondrial 16S rRNA and cytochrome b genes further attest the distinctness of the new species, which was recovered as a member of the Pareas hamptoni clade. Our work brings the total number of species recognized within the genus Pareas to 20.

The genus Calotes Cuvier, 1817 (Agamidae: Draconinae) is highly diverse, with species occurring in South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Most species of the subfamily except C. versicolor have narrow geographic distributions. Calotes versicolor is distributed from western Iran in the west to south China and Indonesia in the east and has been introduced to parts of Africa and North America. The species has had a complicated taxonomic history; multiple species and subspecies related to C. versicolor were described from India and adjoining regions, which were synonymized in subsequent revisions. However, a study of Burmese C. versicolor yielded two new species, C. htunwini and C. irawadi, indicating that C. versicolor is a species complex. Such integrative taxonomic studies have not been carried out in India, the supposed type locality of C. versicolor. Hence, we studied C. versicolor sensu lato from the Indian subcontinent and generated sequences of mitochondrial 16S and COI fragments from tissues sampled from multiple localities in the region, including the type localities of its synonyms. Phylogenetic analyses revealed four well-supported, deeply-divergent lineages, supported by morphological data. These lineages represent (i) C. versicolor sensu stricto, from South India and parts of the east coast, (ii) C. irawadi sensu lato from northeast India and Southeast Asia, (iii) a synonym from the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains which we resurrect here, and (iv) a subspecies from Pakistan which we elevate to species level. We provide re-descriptions for the resurrected or elevated species, and a diagnostic key to the species of the C. versicolor complex. The study shows that C. versicolor sensu stricto is endemic to parts of southern and eastern India, and not widely distributed, though it may have been introduced to other parts of the world.

We here describe a new species of bent-toed geckos from the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which is widespread across the Dafla and Mishmi hills, occurring at elevations ranging from 179 m to 1400 m. The new species is recovered as sister to the Cyrtodactylus khasiensis clade based on a molecular phylogeny inferred from mitochondrial NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase, subunit 2 gene. Intraspecific uncorrected pairwise sequence divergence (p-distance) for the new species was found to be between 0 and 5%, whereas the interspecific divergence from the closely-related congeners was between 19 and 30%. The new species can be differentiated from members of the C. khasiensis clade using a suite of morphological characters: moderate body size (SVL 64.9–81.7); 8–11 supralabials; 8–10 infralabials; 24–26 bluntly conical, feebly keeled dorsal tubercles; 50–60 paravertebral tubercles; ~38 ventral scales between ventrolateral folds; no precloacal groves; 6–10 precloacofemoral pores in a continuous series; 10–16 distal subdigital lamellae on IV of pes; subcaudal scalation of original tail without enlarged plates. This is the fourth reptile species described from Arunachal Pradesh from the expedition led by the team, and this further highlights the need for further herpetological investigations into the region.

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