A new species of Dendrelaphis (Serpentes: Colubridae) from Southeast Asia

Abstract

A new species of the colubrid genus Dendrelaphis Boulenger 1890 is described. Dendrelaphis kopsteini sp. nov. ranges from Thailand through Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore to Sumatra. A detailed statistical analysis of the differences between D. kopsteini sp. nov., D. formosus (Boie, 1827) and D. cyanochloris (Wall, 1921) is provided as the three species have been mixed up frequently in the literature. D. kopsteini sp. nov. differs from all other Dendrelaphis species by a brick red neck coloration. A neotype is designated and described for D. formosus and a lectotype is designated and described for D. cyanochloris.

An investigation into the taxonomy of Dendrelaphis tristis (Daudin, 1803): revalidation of Dipsas schokari (Kuhl, 1820) (Serpentes, Colubridae)

“…Sexual dimorphism in the diagnostic characters was not detected in either species, a fi nding that is largely in line with results regarding several congeneric species (How et al, 1996;Vogel and Van Rooijen, 2007;Van Rooijen and Vogel, 2008).…”

“…The resurrection of D. schokari from synonymy highlights the unique biological status of this area. Furthermore, it stresses the shortcomings in our current understanding of Dendrelaphis-systematics, as previously noted (Vogel and Van Rooijen, 2007;Van Rooijen and Vogel, 2008). The systematics of Dendrelaphis are still far from complete.…”

“…Boulenger 1894, Wall (1921a), Meise and Henning (1932), Mertens (1934) and Smith (1943) have in turn revised the systematics of this genus and have in turn disagreed with one another. As such, it is not surprising that the systematics of this genus have remained ambiguous as well as incomplete, a fact that was underlined by the recent descriptions of two wide-spread as well as rather common Southeast Asian species, Dendrelaphis kopsteini Vogel and Van Rooijen, 2007 and Dendrelaphis haasi Van Rooijen and Vogel, 2008. Dendrelaphis tristis (Daudin, 1803), as hitherto defi ned, inhabits Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar (Ziegler and Vogel, 1999). Daudin described D. tristis on the basis of a plate and some additional information provided by Russell (1796).…”

Phylogenetic analysis of colubrid snakes based on 12S rDNA reveals distinct lineages of Dendrelaphis pictus (Gmelin, 1789) populations in Sumatra and Java

“…Unfortunately, there have been few genetic samplings of Colubridae from Java and Sumatra (Shaney et al 2016). However, some species of colubrid snakes in Indonesia intrigued some scientists in the past (Auliya 2002;How et al 1996;van Rooijen and Vogel 2008a, b;2010;Vogel 2008;Vogel and van Rooijen 2007;. Here, we conducted the first study to address the relationship of colubrid snakes within Java and Sumatra islands using 12S rDNA with focusing on Colubrinae and the newly recognized subfamily (Figueroa et al 2016), Ahaetullinae.…”

Contributions to a review of the Dendrelaphis pictus complex (Serpentes: Colubridae) – 1. Description of a sympatric species

“…D. pictus ngansonensis was later shown to be a full species (Ziegler and Vogel, 1999) but the status of D. proarchus was never reinvestigated. As such, it is not surprising that the systematics of this genus have remained ambiguous as well as incomplete, a fact that was underlined by the recent description of the distinct as well as rather common Southeast Asian species Dendrelaphis kopsteini Vogel and Van Rooijen, 2007.…”