Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Type: Article
Published: 2023-07-18
Page range: 130-144
Abstract views: 2365
PDF downloaded: 28

A new snake of the genus Dendrelaphis Boulenger, 1890 (Squamata: Colubridae) from the coastal area of southern Vietnam

Institute of Tropical Biology; Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology; 85 Tran Quoc Toan St.; Dist. 3; Ho Chi Minh City; Vietnam; Graduate University of Science and Technology; Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology; 18 Hoang Quoc Viet Road; Hanoi; Vietnam
Institute of Tropical Biology; Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology; 85 Tran Quoc Toan St.; Dist. 3; Ho Chi Minh City; Vietnam
Institute of Tropical Biology; Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology; 85 Tran Quoc Toan St.; Dist. 3; Ho Chi Minh City; Vietnam
Indo-Myanmar Conservation; No. 1806; C14 Bac Ha Building; To Huu St.; Tu Liem Dist.; Hanoi; Vietnam
Faculty of Environmental and Food Engineering; Nguyen Tat Thanh University; Ho Chi Minh City; Vietnam
Department of Biology; University of Science; Hue University; 77 Nguyen Hue St.; Hue City; Vietnam
Laboratory of Herpetological Diversity and Evolution; Kunming Institute of Zoology; CAS; China
Reptilia Zoo and Education Centre; 2501 Rutherford Rd Vaughan; ON; Canada L4K 2N6
Reptilia Dendrelaphis binhi Dendrelaphis subocularis hemipenis mitochondrial DNA bronzeback snake

Abstract

We describe a new species of Dendrelaphis from the coastal area in southern Vietnam based on morphological data and nucleotide sequences from one partial mitochondrial gene (Cytb). Dendrelaphis binhi sp. nov. is diagnosed by the following morphological characters: body scale rows 13 at neck and midbody, 9–11 before vent; vertebral scale row feebly enlarged; ventrals 154–158 in males and 161–170 in females; subcaudals 95–106 in males and 95–102 in females; one supralabial touching the eye; 18 or 19 maxillary teeth; hemipenis spinose, reaching 10th or 11th SC, with a slender papilla; cloacal plate divided; dorsum dark brown; and a white stripe along the lower flank. The new species differs from its congeners by an uncorrected p-distance in Cytb sequences of at least 8.1%.

 

References

  1. Biakzuala, L., Lalremsanga, H.T., Tariang, A.D., Vabeiryureilai, M., Muansanga, L., Hrima, V., Kumar, V., Kundu, S., Purkayastha, J. & Vogel, G. (2022) Contributions to the taxonomic status and molecular phylogeny of Asian Bronzeback Snake (Colubridae, Ahaetuliinae), Dendrelaphis Boulenger, 1890), from Mizoram State, Northeast India. Zoosystema, 44, 177–196. https://doi.org/10.5252/zoosystema2022v44a7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5252/zoosystema2022v44a7
  2. Boulenger, G.A. (1888) An account of the Reptilia obtained in Burma, north of Tenasserim, by M. L. Fea, of the Genova Civic Museum. Annali del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Genova, Series 2, 6, 593–604.
  3. Boulenger, G.A. (1890). Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor and Francis, London, 541 pp. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.100797 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.100797
  4. Burbrink, F.T., Lawson, R. & Slowinski, J.B. (2000) Mitochondrial DNA phylogeography of the polytypic North American ratsnake (Elaphe obsoleta): a critique of the subspecies concept. Evolution, 54, 2107–2118. https://doi.org/10.1554/0014-3820(2000)054[2107:MDPOTP]2.0.CO;2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0014-3820.2000.tb01253.x
  5. Das, I. (2015) A Field Guide to the Reptiles of Southeast Asia. Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 376 pp.
  6. Dowling, H.G. (1951) A proposed standard system of counting ventrals in snakes. British Journal of Herpetology, 1, 97–99.
  7. Dowling, H.G. & Savage, J.M. (1960) A guide to the snake hemipenis: a survey of basic structure and systematic characteristics. Zoologica, 45, 17–28. https://doi.org/10.5962/p.203350 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5962/p.203350
  8. Figueroa, A., McKelvy, A.D., Grismer, L.L., Bell, C.D. & Lailvaux, S.P. (2016) A species-level phylogeny of extant snakes with description of a new colubrid subfamily and genus. PLoS ONE, 11, e0161070. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161070 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161070
  9. Grismer, L.L., Chav, T., Neang, T., Wood, P.L., Grismer, J.L., Youmans, T.M., Ponce, A., Daltry, J.C. & Kaiser, H. (2007) The herpetofauna of the Phnom Aural Wildlife Sanctuary and checklist of the herpetofauna of the Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia. Hamadryad, 31, 216–241.
  10. Hillis, D.M. & Bull, J.J. (1993) An empirical test of bootstrapping as a method for assessing confidence in phylogenetic analysis. Systematic Biology, 42, 182–192. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/42.2.182 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/42.2.182
  11. Hoang, D.T., Chernomor, O., von Haeseler, A., Minh, B.Q. & Vinh, L.S. (2018) UFBoot2: Improving the ultrafast bootstrap approximation. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 35, 518–522. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx281 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx281
  12. Jiang, K., Ren, J.L., Guo, J.P., Wang, Z., Ding, L. & Li, J.T. (2020) A new species of the genus Dendrelaphis (Squamata: Colubridae) from Yunnan Province, China, with discussion of the occurrence of D. cyanochloris (Wall, 1921) in China. Zootaxa, 4743 (1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4743.1.1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4743.1.1
  13. Lam, N.Q., Tran, T.A.T., Nguyen, L.T., Murphy, R.W. & Nguyen, S.N. (2021) A new species of Ahaetulla Link, 1807 (Squamata: Colubridae) from the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Zootaxa, 4966 (3), 290–304. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4966.3.2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4966.3.2
  14. Minh, Q., Nguyen, M.A.T. & von Haeseler, A. (2013) Ultrafast approximation for phylogenetic bootstrap. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 30, 1188–1195. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst024
  15. Nguyen, S.V., Ho, C.T. & Nguyen, T.Q. (2009) Herpetofauna of Vietnam. Edition Chimaira, Frankurt am Main, 768 pp.
  16. Nguyen, L.T., Schmidt, H.A., von Haeseler, A. & Minh, B.Q. (2015) IQ-TREE: A fast and effective stochastic algorithm for estimating maximum likelihood phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 32, 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300
  17. Nylander, J.A.A. (2004) MrModeltest. Version 2. Program distributed by the author. Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala. [program]
  18. Ren, J.L., Jiang, K., Huang, J.J., David, P. & Li, J.T. (2022) Taxonomic review of the genus Herpetoreas (Serpentes: Natricidae), with the description of a new species from Tibet, China. Diversity, 2022, 14, 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/d14020079 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/d14020079
  19. Ronquist, R.R. & Huelsenbeck, J.P. (2003) MrBayes 3: Bayesian phylogenetic inference under mixed models. Bioinformatics, 19, 1572–1574. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btg180 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btg180
  20. Rooijen, J.V. & Vogel, G. (2008) A new species of Dendrelaphis (Serpentes: Colubridae) from Java, Indonesia. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 56, 189–197.
  21. Rooijen, J. & Vogel, G. (2010) On the discovery and origin of a Javan population of the Indochinese colubrid snake Dendrelaphis subocularis (Boulenger, 1888): a multivariate study. Contributions to Zoology, 79, 85–92. https://doi.org/10.1163/18759866-07903001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/18759866-07903001
  22. Rooijen, J.V. & Vogel, G. (2012) A revision of the taxonomy of Dendrelaphis caudolineatus (Gray, 1834) (Serpentes: Colubridae). Zootaxa, 3272 (1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3272.1.1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3272.1.1
  23. Smith, M.A. (1943) The fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma: Reptilia and Amphibia. Taylor and Francis, London, 583 pp.
  24. Tamura, K., Peterson, D., Peterson, N., Stecher, G., Nei, M. & Kumar, S. (2011) MEGA5: Molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 28, 2731–2739. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr121 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr121
  25. Thompson, J.D., Higgins, D.G. & Gibson, T.J. (1994) CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Research, 22, 4673–4680. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/22.22.4673 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/22.22.4673
  26. Trifinopoulos, J., Nguyen, L.T., von Haeseler, A. & Minh, B.Q. (2016) W-IQ-TREE: a fast online phylogenetic tool for maximum likelihood analysis. Nucleic Acids Research, 44, W232–W235. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkw256 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkw256
  27. Uetz, P., Freed, P. & Hosek, J. (Eds.) (2023) The Reptile Database. Available from: http://www.reptile-database.org/ (accessed 10 March 2023)
  28. Vassilieva, A.B., Galoyan, E.A., Poyarkov, N.A. & Geissler, P. (2016) A Photographic Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Lowland Monsoon Forests of Southern Vietnam. Edition Chimaira, Frankurt am Main, 324 pp.
  29. Vogel, G. & Rooijen, J.V. (2007) A new species of Dendrelaphis (Serpentes: Colubridae) from Southeast Asia. Zootaxa, 1394 (1), 25–45. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.1394.1.2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.1394.1.2
  30. Vogel, G. & Rooijen, J. (2008) Contribution to a review of the Dendrelaphis pictus complex (Serpentes: Colubridae)—2. The eastern forms. Herpetozoa, 21, 3–29. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853808783431514 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/156853808783431514
  31. Vogel, G. & Rooijen, J.V. (2011) Description of a new species of the genus Dendrelaphis Boulenger, 1890 from Myanmar (Squamata: Serpentes: Colubridae). Bonn Zoological Bulletin, 60, 17–24.
  32. Vogel, G., Rooijen, J.V. & Hauser, S. (2012) A new species of Dendrelaphis Boulenger, 1890 (Squamata: Colubridae) from Thailand and Myanmar. Zootaxa, 3392 (1), 35–46. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3392.1.2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3392.1.2
  33. Ziegler, T. & Vogel, G. (1999) On the knowledge and specific status of Dendrelaphis ngansonensis (Bourret, 1935) (Reptilia: Serpentes: Colubridae). Russian Journal of Herpelotogy, 6, 199–208.