Abstract
We describe a new species of the genus Eryx Daudin, 1803 from southern Iran that is morphologically closely related to the Indian sand boa, E. johnii. The new species, Eryx sistanensis sp. nov. has a distribution range from Zabol in the Sistan Region to the southern parts of Sistan & Baluchistan, as well as Hormozgan Province of Iran. Morphologically, E. sistanensis sp. nov. differs from E. johnii by having fewer dorsal scale rows at midbody and the tail tip is not as blunt as E. johnii. The genetic distance (p-distance) between the new species and the Indian sand boa is considerable (9.1% for cytb and 11.8% for COI).
References
Ananjeva, N.B., Orlov, N.L., Khalikov, R.G. Darevsky, I.S., Ryabov, S.A. & Barabanov, A.V. (2006) The Reptiles of Northern Eurasia. Pensoft, Sofia, Bulgaria, 250 pp.
Bartlett, R.D. & Bartlett, P.P. (1998) Snakes. Barrons Educational Series, New York, 109 pp.
Boulenger, G.A. (1893) Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum (Natural History). Vol. I. Containing the Families Typhlopidae, Glauconiidae, Boidae, Ilysiidae, Uropeltidae, Xenopeltidae, and Colubridae Aglyphae, part. Trustees of the British Museum, London, 448 pp.
Boulenger, G.A. (1913) The snakes of Europe. Methusen & Co., London, 269 pp.
Burbrink, F.T., Lawson, R. & Slowinski, J.B. (2000) Molecular phylogeography of the North American rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta): a critique of the subspecies concept. Evolution, 54 (6), 2107–2114.
https://doi.org/10.1554/0014-3820(2000)054[2107:MDPOTP]2.0.CO;2
Constable, J. (1949) Reptiles from the Indian Peninsula in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Bulletin Museum of Comparative Zoology, 103, 59–160.
Das, I. (1991) A new species of Eryx (Boidae: Serpentes: Squamata) from south-western India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 88 (1), 92–97.
Eskandarzadeh, N., Rastegar-Pouyani, N., Rastegar-Pouyani, E., Todehdehghan, F., Rajabizadeh., M., Zarrintab, M., Rhadi, F.A. & Kami, H.G. (2020) Revised classification of the genus Eryx Daudin, 1803 (Serpentes: Erycidae) in Iran and neighbouring areas, based on mtDNA sequences and morphological data. Herpetological Journal, 30 (1), 2–12.
https://doi.org/10.33256/hj30.1.212
Hall, T.A. (1999) BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT. Nucleic Acids Symposium Series, 41, 95–98. [Information Retrieval Ltd., c1979–c2000.]
Huelsenbeck, J.P. & Ronquist, F. (2001) MRBAYES: Bayesian inference of phylogenetic trees. Bioinformatics, 17, 754–755.
https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/17.8.754
Kapli, P., Botoni, D., Ilgaz, C., Kumlutas¸ Y., Avc, A., Rastegar-Pouyani, N., Fathinia, B., Lymberakis, P., Ahmadzadeh, F. & Poulakakis, N. (2013) Molecular phylogeny and historical biogeography of the Anatolian lizard Apathya (Squamata, Lacertidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 66, 992–1001.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2012.12.002
Kluge, A.G. (1993) Calabaria and the phylogeny of erycine snakes. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 107 (4), 293–351.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1993.tb00290.x
Kumar, S., Stecher, G. & Tamura, K. (2016) MEGA7: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 7.0 for bigger datasets. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 33 (7), 1870–1874.
https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msw054
Lanza, B. & Nistri, A. (2005) Somali Boidae (genus Eryx Daudin 1803) and Pythonidae (genus Python Daudin 1803) (Reptilia Serpentes). Tropical Zoology, 18 (1), 67–137.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03946975.2005.10531215
Latifi, M. (1991) The Snakes of Iran. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Oxford, Ohio, 159 pp.
Leviton, A.E. & Anderson, S.C. (1970) The amphibians and reptiles of Afghanistan, a checklist and key to the herpetofauna. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 4 (38), 163–206.
Minton, S.A. (1966) A contribution to the herpetology of West Pakistan. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 134, 29–184.
Nagy, Z.T., Sonet, G., Glaw, F. & Vences, M. (2012) First large-scale DNA barcoding assessment of reptiles in the biodiversity hotspot of Madagascar, based on newly designed COI primers. Plos One, 7 (3), e34506.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034506
Nikolsky, A.M. (1907) Reptiles and Amphibians collected by N.A. Zarudny in Persia 1903–1904. Annuaire Musée Zoologique de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, 10, 260–301. [in Russian]
Palumbi, S.R., Martin, A., Romano, S., McMillan, W.O., Stice, L. & Grabowski, G. (1991) The Simple Fool’s Guide to PCR. Version 2.0. Privately published, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 45 pp.
Pyron, R.A., Reynolds, R.G. & Burbrink, F.T. (2014) Taxonomic Revision of Boas (Serpentes: Boidae). Zootaxa, 3846 (2), 249–260.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3846.2.5
Rajabizadeh, M. (2018) Snakes of Iran. Iranshenasi publisher, Tehran, 496 pp.
Rastegar-Pouyani, E., Rastegar-Pouyani, N., Kazemi Noureini, S., Joger, U. & Wink, M. (2010) Molecular phylogeny of the Eremias persica complex of the Iranian plateau (Reptilia: Lacertidae), based on mtDNA sequences. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 158, 641–660.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.2009.00553.x
Reynolds, R.G., Niemiller, M.L. & Revell, L.J. (2014) Toward a Tree-of-Life for the boas and pythons: Multilocus species-level phylogeny with unprecedented taxon sampling. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 71, 201–213.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2013.11.011
Russell, P. (1801) A continuation of an account of Indian serpents: containing descriptions and figures from specimens and drawings, transmitted from various parts of India to the hon. Court of Directors of the East Indian Company. W. Bulmer and Co., London, 53 pp.
Sharma, R.C. (2007) Fauna of India and the Adjacent Countries- Reptilia, Volume-III (Serpentes). The Director, Zool. Surv. India, Kolkata, 410 pp.
Smith, M.A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, Including the Whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region. Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol 3. Serpentes. Taylor and Francis, London, 583 pp.
Sorensen, D. (1988) The Genus Eryx. Bulletin of the Chicago herpetological society, 23 (2), 21–25.
Swofford, D.L. (1998) PAUP*. Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony (*and Other Methods). Version 4. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts, 128 pp.
Stull, O.G. (1935) A checklist of the family Boidae. Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, 40, 387–408.
Tokar, A.A. (1991) A revision of the subspecies structure of Javelin Sand Boa, Eryx jaculus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Reptilia, Boidae). Herpetological Researches, 1, 18–41.
Vitt, L.J. & Caldwell, J.P. (2014) Herpetology: An introductory biology of amphibians and reptiles. Fourth Edition, Elsevier, Norman, Oklahoma, 757 pp.
Vyas, R., Prajapati, V. & Parmar, D. (2012) The Case of Incomplete Albinism in Indian Red Sand Boa Eryx johnii johnii (Russell, 1801) (Reptilia: Serpentes: Boidae). Russian Journal of Herpetology, 19, 299–302.
Wagner, P., Bauer, A.M., Leviton, A.E., Wilms, T.M. & Böhme, W. (2016) A Checklist of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Afghanistan –Exploring Herpetodiversity using Biodiversity Archives. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Series 4, 63, 457–565.
Wall, F. (1912) A popular treatise on the common Indian snakes. Journal Bombay natural history Society, 21, 447–475.
Wall, F. (1924) The affinities of Eryx jaculus and Eryx johni. Journal Bombay natural history Society, 29, 842–843.
Wallach, V., Williams, K.L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: a Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1209 pp.
Zarrintab, M., Milto, K.D., Eskandarzadeh, N., Zangi, B., Jahan, M., Kami, H.G., Rastegar-Pouyani, N., Rastegar-Pouyani, E. & Rajabizadeh, M. (2017) Taxonomy and distribution of sand boas of the genus Eryx Daudin, 1803 (Serpentes: Erycidae) in Iran. Zoology in the Middle East, 63 (2), 117–129.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09397140.2017.1299330