Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Responsive image
Issue: Vol. 5374 No. 1: 15 Nov. 2023
Type: Article
Published: 2023-11-15
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5374.1.4
Page range: 74-92
Abstract views: 402
PDF downloaded: 22

Rediscovery and systematics of Rhinophis fergusonianus Boulenger, 1896 (Serpentes: Uropeltidae) from India’s Western Ghats

Natural History Museum; London SW7 5BD; UK; Department of Zoology; Central University of Kerala; Kerala; 671320; India
SM Sehgal Foundation Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation; Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE); Royal Enclave; Srirampura; Bangalore; Karnataka – 560064; India
Natural History Museum; London SW7 5BD; UK; Senckenberg Dresden; Königsbrücker Landstraße 159; 01109 Dresden; Germany; University of Wolverhampton; Wulfruna St; Wolverhampton WV1 1LY; UK
State Forest Training Institute; Kerala Forest Department; Arippa; Kollam; Kerala – 691310; India
Centre for Research in Emerging Tropical Diseases; Department of Zoology; University of Calicut; Thenhipalam; Kerala; 673635; India; Aranyakam Nature Foundation; Kochi; Kerala; 682037; India
Reptilia identification key Palghat (= Palakkad) Gap shieldtail snakes taxonomy

Abstract

The shieldtail snake Rhinophis fergusonianus Boulenger, 1896 was previously known only from the holotype specimen collected approximately 130 years ago from an imprecise Indian locality (Cardamom Hills). We report the rediscovery of this species from four localities, from low-elevation hills on both sides of the Palghat Gap in the southern part of the Western Ghats of peninsular India. We document new specimens of R. fergusonianus and provide a reassessment of the systematics of the species based on external morphology and DNA-sequence data. We also provide a revised key to the identification of Indian species of Rhinophis.

 

References

  1. Areìvalo, E., Davis, S.K. & Sites, J.W. (1994) Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence and phylogenetic relationships among eight chromosome races of the Sceloporus grammicus complex (Phrynosomatidae) in Central Mexico. Systematic Biology, 43 (3), 387–418.
  2. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/43.3.387
  3. Boulenger, G.A. (1896) Description of a new earth-snake from Travancore (Rhinophis fergusonianus). The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 10, 236.
  4. Cyriac, V.P., Narayanan, S., Sampaio, F.L., Umesh, P. & Gower, D.J. (2020) A new species of Rhinophis Hemprich, 1820 (Serpentes: Uropeltidae) from the Wayanad region of peninsular India. Zootaxa, 4778 (2), 329–342. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4778.2.5
  5. Dowling, H.G. (1951) A proposed method of expressing scale reductions in snakes. Copeia, 1951, 131–134. https://doi.org/10.2307/1437542
  6. Ferguson, H.S. (1895) List of snakes taken in Travancore from 1888 to 1895. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 10, 68–77.
  7. Gower, D.J. (2023) On the taxonomy of Uropeltis petersi (Beddome, 1878) (Serpentes: Uropeltidae) and description of a new, closely related species from the Western Ghats of India. Zootaxa 5319, 103–109. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5319.1.7
  8. Gower, D.J. & Ablett, J.D. (2006) Counting ventral scales in Asian anilioid snakes. Herpetological Journal, 16, 259–263.
  9. Gower, D.J., Dharne, M., Bhatta, G., Giri, V.B., Vyas, R., Venu, G., Oommen, O.V., George, J., Schouche, Y. & Wilkinson, M. (2007) Remarkable genetic homogeneity in unstriped, long-tailed Ichthyophis along 1500 km of the Western Ghats, India. Journal of Zoology, 272, 266–275. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2006.00266.x
  10. IUCN Species Survival Commission (SC) (2012) IUCN Red List categories and criteria, Version 3.1. 2nd Edition. IUCN, Gland and Cambridge, 32 pp.
  11. Kumar, S., Stecher, G. & Tamura, K. (2016) MEGA7: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis version 7.0 for bigger datasets. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 33, 1870–1874. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msw054
  12. Lanfear, R., Frandsen, P.B., Wright, A.M., Senfeld, T., Calcott, B. (2017) PartitionFinder 2: new methods for selecting partitioned models of evolution for molecular and morphological phylogenetic analyses. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 34, 772–773. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msw260
  13. 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
  14. Mason, G.E. (1888) Description of a new earth-snake of the genus Silybura from the Bombay Presidency with remarks on little known Uropeltidae. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1, 184–186. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222938809460704
  15. Meyer, W.S., Burn, R., Cotton, J.S. & Risley, H.H. (1908–1931) The Imperial Gazetteer of India. New edition, published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council. 26 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Available for reference online through the Digital South Asia Library. Available from: http://dsal. uchicago.edu (accessed December 2022)
  16. McDiarmid, R.W., Campbell, J.A. & Toureì, T. (1999) Snake Species of the World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. Vol. 1. The Herpetologists’ League, Washington, 511 pp.
  17. Palumbi, S.R., Martin, A.P., Romano, S.L., McMillan, W.O., Stice, L. & Grabowski, G. (1991) The Simple Fool’s Guide to PCR. Version 2. University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 45 pp.
  18. Pyron, R.A., Ganesh, S.R., Sayyed, A., Sharma, V., Wallach, V. & Somaweera, R. (2016) A catalogue and systematic overview of the shield-tailed snakes (Serpentes: Uropeltidae). Zoosystema, 38 (4), 453–506. https://doi.org/10.5252/z2016n4a2
  19. Raheem, D.C., Taylor, H., Ablett, J., Preece, R.C., Aravind, N.A. & Naggs, F. (2014) A systematic revision of the land snail fauna of the Western Ghats of India. Tropical Natural History, Supplement 4, 1–294. [https://li01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/tnh/article/view/103091]
  20. Ronquist. F., Teslenko, M., Mark, V.D.P., Ayres, D., Darling, A., Höhna, S., Lar­get, B., Liu, L., Suchard, M.A. & Huelsenbeck, J.P. (2012) MrBayes 3.2: Efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology 61, 539–542. https://doi. org/10.1093/sysbio/sys029
  21. Sampaio, F.L., Narayanan, S., Cyriac, V.P., Venu, G. & Gower, D.J. (2020) A new Indian species of Rhinophis Hemprich, 1820 closely related to R. sanguineus Beddome, 1863 (Serpentes: Uropeltidae). Zootaxa 4881 (1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4881.1.1
  22. Sampaio, F.L., Day, J.J., Wickramasinghe, L.J.M., Cyriac, V.P., Papadopoulou, A., Brace, S., Rajendran, A., Simon-Nutbrown, C., Flouris, T., Kapli, P., Vidanapathirana, D.R., Kotharambath, R., Kodandaramaiah, U. & Gower, D.J. (2023) A near-complete species-level phylogeny of uropeltid snakes harnessing historical museum collections as a DNA source. Molecular Phylogenetics & Evolution, 178, 107651. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2022.107651
  23. Stecher, G., Tamura, K. & Kumar, S. (2020) Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis (MEGA) for macOS. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 37, 1237–1239. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msz312
  24. Tamura, K., Peterson, D., Peterson, N., Stecher, G., Nei, M. & Kumar, S. (2011) MEGA 5: 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
  25. Uetz, P., Freed, P., Aguilar, R., reyes, F. & Hošek, J. (2022) The Reptile Database. WWW Document. Available from: http://www.reptile-database.org (accessed January 2023)
  26. Vijayakumar, S.P., Menezes, R.C., Jayarajan, A. & Kartik, S. (2016) Glaciations, gradients, and geography: Multiple drivers of diversification of bush frogs in the Western Ghats escarpment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 283, 20161011. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.1011
  27. Wickramasinghe, L.M., Vidanapathirana, D.R., Rajeev, M.G. & Gower, D.J. (2017) A new species of Rhinophis Hemprich, 1820 (Serpentes: Uropeltidae) from the central hills of Sri Lanka. Zootaxa, 4263, 153–164. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4263.1.7
  28. Wickramasinghe, L.M., Vidanapathirana, D.R., Wickramasinghe, N. & Gower, D.J. (2020) A new species of Rhinophis Hemprich, 1820 (Reptilia: Uropeltidae), from cloud forest of the Knuckles massif of Sri Lanka. Zootaxa, 4810 (1), 65–80. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4810.1.3
  29. Zhang, D., Gao, F., Jakovlić, I., Zou, H., Zhang, J., Li, W.X. & Wang, G.T. (2020) PhyloSuite: An integrated and scalable desktop platform for streamlined molecular sequence data management and evolutionary phylogenetics studies. Molecular Ecology Resources, 20, 348–355. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13096