A new species of Ahaetulla Link, 1807 (Serpentes: Colubridae: Ahaetullinae) from India

ABSTRACT

A new species of vine snake of the genus Ahaetulla is described from peninsular India. The new taxon is a medium-sized arboreal snake, readily distinguished from all other congeners by morphological and genetic differences. The new species appears to be widely distributed in Eastern Ghats and Central India with the western-most distribution extending into eastern Rajasthan. However, it is relatively rare, with only three specimens being acquired over the past nine years.

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:B610BF55-3CEF-4160-9A2C-25A069A82223

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:AD84ABAE-F4F5-452C-8EFD-969D191E738B

KEYWORDS:

• Ahaetulla nasuta
• Eastern Ghats
• Rajasthan
• snake
• taxonomy

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Kailash Chandra, Director, Zoological Survey of India for extending generous support and encouragement in describing the new species. The authors are also indebted to PCCF (WL) and Chief Wildlife Warden of Odisha Forest Department for support in many ways to conduct faunal surveys in Odisha. We thank Basudev Tripathy, Officer-in-Charge, Technical Section of Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata for facilitating the study of museum specimens. The staff of the reptile section of ZSI, Kolkata, namely Varada Raju, P.G.S. Sethy, Kaushik Deuti, Prabat Bag and Sujoy Raha have always been of great help. We are extremely thankful to S. Sambath, ZSI, CZRC, Jabalpur and P. M. Suresan, ZSI, WGRS, Calicut for museum facilities and constant encouragements. Patrick Campbell at NHM, London and Patrick David from Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris are deeply acknowledged for curatorial support and literature help. We are also extremely thankful to Aaron M. Bauer, Villanova University, Pennsylvania, USA for help with various relevant literatures. It is our great pleasure to thank Manoj V. Nair, Wildlife Institute of India for providing information about the specimen from Mayurbhanj. We would like to thank Alan Resetar (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago) and Bryan L Stuart (North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences) for photographs. Rahul Khot, Curator-Reptile collections, BNHS, Saunak Pal, Mrugank Prabhu are thanked for curatorial support. PPM would like to thank Robert C. Drewes, Emeritus Curator and Jens V. Vindum, former Senior Collection Manager, Department of Herpetology, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA, USA for facilitation and curatorial support. SN thanks Soubadra Devy, Fellow, ATREE for the support and encouragement and Priyanka Jaikumar for helping in the field. VD’s contribution was supported, in part, by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship EU project 751567. We are thankful the two anonymous reviewers for careful reading and insightful suggestions which improved this manuscript. We also thank Ashok Captain for his valuable comments and suggestions to improve this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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