Additions to the phylogeny of colubrine snakes in Southwestern Asia, with description of a new genus and species (Serpentes: Colubridae: Colubrinae)

Abstract

Reptiles are still being described worldwide at a pace of hundreds of species a year. While many discoveries are from remote tropical areas, biodiverse arid regions still harbor many novel taxa. Here, we present an updated phylogeny of colubrid snakes from the Western Palearctic by analyzing a supermatrix of all available global snake species with molecular data and report on the discovery of a new genus and species of colubrine snake from southeastern Iran. The new taxon, named Persiophis fahimii Gen. et sp. nov., is nested within a clade containing Middle Eastern and South Asian ground racers (Lytorhynchus, Rhynchocalamus, Wallaceophis, and Wallophis). This species has a derived morphology including an edentulous pterygoid and occurrence of short and blunt teeth on the palatine, maxillae and dentary bones, an elongated snout and a relatively trihedral first supralabial scale that is slightly bigger than the second, and elongated toward the tip of rostral. We also report on the osteology and phylogenetic placement of several poorly studied colubrines: Hierophis andreanus (reassigned to Dolichophis) and Muhtarophis barani.

Revealing two centuries of confusion: new insights on nomenclature and systematic position of Argyrogena fasciolata (Shaw, 1802) (auctt.), with description of a new species from India (Reptilia: Squamata: Colubridae)

“…Furthermore, we found that short lateral processes lead to a more pointed snout, thus a projected rostrum, a condition also commonly used as a key character to separate Argyrogena from Platyceps (see e.g. Rajabizadeh et al 2020). However, a projected rostrum of variable expression and a countersunk lower jaw is also reported for different Platyceps species by Schätti et al (2014; see also comments below).…”

“…In their study on Western Palearctic colubrid snakes, Rajabizadeh et al (2020) provided a comparative morphological table with eight characters for colubrine genera of India, Central and Western Asia and North Africa. All these characters were identical for Wallaceophis and Wallophis and for Argyrogena and Platyceps as well.…”

“…Apart from the five genes for which we generated data, we also included an additional gene 12S because sequences of this marker were available for 55% of the samples. Taxon sampling was based on the recent publications on global snake and old world racer phylogenies (Figueroa et al 2016;Zaher et al 2019;Rajabizadeh et al 2020). Newly generated data were combined with data from GenBank for other old world racers and the outgroups (Appendix 1), and aligned using the ClustalW algorithm (Thompson et al 1994) with default settings as implemented in mega7 (Kumar et al 2016).…”

Molecular phylogeny of Lytorhynchus diadema (Reptilia, Colubridae) populations in Saudi Arabia

“…Thus, all phylogenetic analyses (MP, NJ, and BI) support the monophyletic status of the genus Lytorhynchus from Asia and Africa based on the concatenated analysis and the 12S rRNA gene separately. Previous assemblage studies suggested the monophyly of most members within subfamily Colubrinae based on molecular DNA sequences and morphology (McDowell 1987;Rossman and Eberle 1977;Heise et al 1995;Kraus and Brown 1998;Vidal et al 2000;Kelly et al 2003;Rajabizadeh et al 2020). Furthermore, Tamar et al (2016) referred to the monophyly of Rhynchocalamus, which had separated from Lytorhynchus during the Late Oligocene at ca.…”

Kukri snakes Oligodon Fitzinger, 1826 of the Western Palearctic with the resurrection of Contia transcaspica Nikolsky, 1902 (Reptilia, Squamata, Colubridae)

“…Knowledge of the snake fauna of Middle and Southwest Asia (here considered the countries of Afghanistan, Iran, western China, Mongolia and the former Soviet Middle Asian republics fide Berg, 1931 ; Geptner, 1938 ; Chernov, 1949 ) has improved over the past decade as researchers continue to contribute species descriptions, range extensions, and natural history observations ( Wagner et al, 2016a ; Rajabizadeh, 2018 ; Shestopal & Rustamov, 2018a ; Shestopal & Rustamov, 2018b ; Orlov et al, 2018 ; Asadi et al, 2019 ; Rajabizadeh et al, 2020 ; Eskandarzadeh et al, 2020 ; Chen et al, 2021 ). Biogeographically, most snakes inhabiting Middle–Southwest Asia are elements of the Palearctic; however, a few species traditionally associated with the Indo-Malayan (Oriental) realm reach their westernmost distributional limits in this region ( Wagner et al, 2016b ; Orlov et al, 2018 ).…”