Another case of colour pattern polymorphism in Earth Snakes of the genus Geophis (Dipsadidae) from southern Mexico

ABSTRACT

Geophis laticollaris and G. russatus are rare Mexican snakes currently known in the scientific literature only from their holotypes. However, fieldwork conducted in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca by us and other workers during the last decades has made a few specimens of each taxon available for study. We review the taxonomic status of G. russatus on the basis of scutellation, colour pattern, maxillary, and hemipenial characters and sequences of a fragment of the cyt-b mitochondrial gene. We conclude that G. russatus is a colour morph and a junior synonym of G. laticollaris.

RESUMEN

Geophis laticollaris y G. russatus son serpientes mexicanas raras conocidas en la literatura científica únicamente a partir de sus holotipos. Sin embargo, el trabajo de campo realizado en los estados de Guerrero y Oaxaca por nosotros y otros investigadores durante las últimas décadas ha dado por resultado algunos ejemplares de cada taxón disponibles para su estudio. Revisamos el status taxonómico de G. russatus con base en caracteres de escutelación, patrón de coloración, morfología maxilar y hemipeneal y secuencias de un fragmento del gen mitocondrial cyt-b. Consideramos que G. russatus es una variante de color y un sinónimo junior de G. laticollaris.

KEYWORDS:

• Earth Snakes
• Dipsadidae
• geographic distribution
• taxonomic status
• synonymization

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Matías Dominguez-Laso and Brian Siurob-Espíndola for donating specimens for this study. Fieldwork was funded by a CONACyT project (#CONACyT PN2271) issued to LMOO. RPA and LCM thank the Posgrado en Ciencias Biológicas for receiving funding through CONACyT scholarships (CVU 857990 and 178544, respectively). Uri García-Vázquez helped running PartitionFinder v.2.1. Antonio Yolocalli Cisneros-Bernal helped with maximum likelihood analyses on RAxML-HPC2. Carlos J. Pavón-Vázquez and Antonio Yolocalli Cisneros-Bernal provided valuable feedback that helped improve earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Comisión Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, México.