A new species of snake of the genus Oligodon Boie in Fitzinger, 1826 (Reptilia, Serpentes) from the Western Himalayas

Zeeshan A. Mirza,Virender Kumar Bhardwaj,Harshil Patel

doi:10.3897/evolsyst.5.72564

Zeeshan A. Mirza, Virender Kumar Bhardwaj + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3897/evolsyst.5.72564

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Abstract

A new species ofOligodonFitzinger, 1826 is described based on specimens collected from Churah Valley of Himachal Pradesh. The new species is related toO. arnensisbased on molecular as well as morphological data, however differs from it in several aspects. The new species shows a pairwise sequence divergence of 6–20% from congeners for mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. Lack of pterygoid and palatine teeth of the new species suggests that the diet may largely comprise of eggs. Discovery of the new species is not surprising, as the Western Himalayas has been poorly explored in terms of its herpetofaunal diversity. Considerable genetic divergence in the sampled sequence suggestsOligodon arnensisis a species complex, likely represents multiple species and a revision of the group would be desirable.

Highlights

The colubrid snake genus Oligodon Boie in Fitzinger, 1826 is represented by 84 species distributed throughout Asia (Uetz and Hallermann 2021) and the number of species within the genus has increased considerably in the recent past
Oligodon churahensis sp. nov. differs from all South Asian congeners, except O. affinis Günther, 1862, O. arnensis, O. cinereus (Günther, 1864), O. erythrogaster Boulenger, 1907, O. melanozonatus Wall, 1922, O. theobaldi (Günther, 1868), O. travancoricus Beddome, 1877, O. venustus (Jerdon, 1853) and O. woodmasoni (Sclater, 1891), by having 17 dorsal scale rows at midbody
Phylogenetic analysis based on mitochondrial cytochrome b gene recovered two well-supported clades within Oligodon, viz the ‘arnensis’ clade and the ‘albocinctus’ clade

Summary

Introduction

The colubrid snake genus Oligodon Boie in Fitzinger, 1826 is represented by 84 species distributed throughout Asia (Uetz and Hallermann 2021) and the number of species within the genus has increased considerably in the recent past. This is a result of description of several new species largely due to an integrated taxonomic approach (Nguyen et al 2020). The topography, climate and forest type play a major role in the Eastern Himalayas being more biodiverse, this may be attributed to an extent to lack of dedicated surveys conducted in the Western Himalayas for herpetofaunal documentation (Mirza et al 2020a). Most surveys conducted across the region have largely employed morphology-based species identification methods for estimating herpetofaunal species

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