“…Several recent taxonomic studies have demonstrated that the species diversity of Pareinae is still underestimated ( e.g ., Vogel, 2015 ; Hauser, 2017 ; Quah et al, 2019 , 2020 ; Quah, Lim & Grismer, 2021 ; Le et al, 2021 ). The high degree of morphological similarity among closely related taxa of Pareinae often makes species delineation in slug snakes quite challenging ( Guo & Deng, 2009 ; Vogel, 2015 ; Yang et al, 2021 ), suggesting that the molecular data represent an effective tool to help untangle taxonomic controversies when morphological analyses yield inconsistent results ( You, Poyarkov & Lin, 2015 ; Loredo et al, 2013 ; Vogel et al, 2020 , 2021 ; Bhosale et al, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2020 ; Ding et al, 2020 ; Liu & Rao, 2021 ; Yang et al, 2021 ). Application of the integrative taxonomic approach combining evidence from morphological and molecular data resulted in the discovery of several previously unnoticed taxa and allowed to revise several species complexes, including the Pareas hamptoni complex ( You, Poyarkov & Lin, 2015 ; Bhosale et al, 2020 ; Ding et al, 2020 ; Liu & Rao, 2021 ; Yang et al, 2021 ), the P. margaritophorus complex ( Vogel et al, 2020 ; Suntrarachun et al, 2020 ), and the P. monticola complex ( Vogel et al, 2021 ).…”