Description of a new species of Southeast Asian reed snake from northern Laos (Squamata: Colubridae: Genus Calamaria F. Boie, 1827) with a revised diagnosis of Calamaria yunnanensis Chernov, 1962

ABSTRACT

I describe a new Calamaria from northern Laos that was previously misidentified as Calamaria yunnanensis Chernov, 1962. This new species is quite similar to C. yunnanensis, but is distinguished by having a considerable pairwise genetic distance in the mitochondrial gene CytB (~20.2%) and the following morphological characters: nine modified maxillary teeth; length of rostral scale visible from above half the length of the prefrontal suture; eye diameter less than eye–mouth distance; preocular scale absent; single postocular scale present, less than eye diameter; 179 ventral scales in female; 21 subcaudal scales in female; subcaudals 10.9% of total body scales on the ventral surface; dorsal scales reducing to six rows above 12^th subcaudal anterior to the tail tip, reducing to four rows above the last subcaudal; dorsal ground colour in preservative bluish-grey with five indistinct dark brown longitudinal stripes throughout body; and entire ventral region immaculate yellow in preservative. To clarify the taxonomic status of C. yunnanensis, I provide a revised diagnosis of this species and thoroughly describe a referred specimen sampled for mitochondrial DNA sequence data in past studies. Additional material from south-western China, northern Laos, Thailand and Myanmar is needed to resolve issues in the taxonomy of Calamaria in this region.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:AD8D2EAF-E76E-4D49-9DA8-4C5A656B4F9A

KEYWORDS:

• taxonomy
• Southeast Asia
• biodiversity
• systematics
• morphology
• Squamata
• Ophidia
• Colubroidea

Acknowledgements

I thank Amy Lathrop, Robert W. Murphy (ROM) and Alan R. Resetar (FMNH) for permission to examine and borrow specimens under their care; George R. Zug, Steve W. Gotte, Rob Wilson and Esther Langan (USNM) for facilitating specimen loans and providing lab space throughout the course of my study; Daniel G. Mulcahy (Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin) and Aryeh H. Miller (Washington University, USA) for assistance with the molecular portion of this project; and Shuo Liu and Ding-Qi Rao (KIZ) for sharing photographs and data of Calamaria yunnanensis specimens from the type locality. I also thank Jeffrey A. Wilkinson (San Francisco, USA) and Kai Wang (University of Oklahoma, USA) for providing copies and translations of important literature; Kraig Adler (Cornell University, USA), Nikolai L. Orlov (ZISP) and Jingsong Shi (Beijing, China) for helping me track down information on the type specimen of C. yunnanensis; Natalia A. Ananjeva (ZISP) for permission to use a photograph of Dr Sergey A. Chernov; Nikolay A. Poyarkov Jr. (Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia) for translating Dr Chernov’s original description of C. yunnanensis (included in the Supplementary materials); Chung-Wei Logan You (Taipei, Taiwan) for giving permission to use the photograph of a live C. yunnanensis he observed and for graciously answering requests for additional natural history information on this specimen; and two anonymous reviewers who gave constructive comments that greatly improved the quality of this publication. Special thanks to Bryan L. Stuart (North Carolina State Museum, USA) for his support on this project, for commenting on an earlier version of this manuscript, and for his extensive contributions to the herpetofauna of Laos. Lastly, I thank my family and the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences for emotional and logistical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Funding

This research was funded in part by the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences Summer Travel Enrichment Award. The University of Maryland College Park Scholars Life Sciences division, George R. Zug (USNM) and my family provided additional support.