The Status and Natural History of the Rennell Island Sea Krait, Laticauda crockeri (Serpentes: Laticaudidae)

Relationships between sexual dimorphism and niche partitioning within a clade of sea-snakes (Laticaudinae)

“…Laticaudines forage in the ocean, but return to land to mate, lay eggs, digest their prey, and shed their skins. Three laticaudine sea-snake taxa occur in Vanuatu, all belonging to a clade of species that feed primarily or exclusively on eels (Cogger et al 1987;Greer 1997). One species, L. laticaudata, is an elongate snake with blue markings between its black bands: it is morphologically distinctive from the other two taxa and will not be considered further in the present paper.…”

“…Average adult body size appears to be conservative over this wide geographic range, up to approximately 150 cm snout-vent length (SVL) and 1,800 g in females versus 100 cm SVL and 600 g in males (McCarthy 1986;Cogger et al 1987;Shetty and Prasad 1996;Heatwole 1999;Shetty 2000). At least in Fijian L. colubrina (the only laticaudine population for which we have detailed data), this sexual size dimorphism is associated with niche partitioning between the sexes.…”

“…One outcome of this research was the discovery that populations of the yellow-lipped sea krait (Laticauda colubrina) in Vanuatu actually comprised two syntopic sibling species -the larger Laticauda colubrina (s.s.) and a much smaller sister species, for which the name Laticauda frontalis (DeVis 1905) is available (Cogger et al 1987). We have now used this system to examine correlated shifts in dietary habits and sexual dimorphism between two areas with different prey-size spectra.…”

“…Such dwarf forms have evolved at least three times within laticaudine phylogeny (crockeri, frontalis, schistorhynchus: Cogger et al 1987;Heatwole and Guinea 1993), perhaps reflecting the importance of prey size (and thus, body size) as an axis of ecological variation within the group. 4.…”

Global diversity of snakes (Serpentes; Reptilia) in freshwater

“…Details on freshwater snake systematics, distribution and natural history are to be found in the works of, a.o., Anonymous (no date) (World), Boulenger (1913) (Palaearctic), Manthey & Grossmann (1997), Pauwels et al (2001), Cogger et al (1987), Murphy & Voris (2005), Vogel et al (2004), Voris et al (2002) (Australasian and Oriental), do Amaral (1978), Cei (1993) and Roze (1996) (Nearctic and Neotropical). Familial and subfamilial allocations of colubroid genera mostly follow Lawson et al (2005) (Fig.…”