A relict lineage and new species of green palm-pitviper (Squamata, Viperidae, Bothriechis) from the Chortís Highlands of Mesoamerica

Josiah Townsend,Larry Wilson,James Austin,Melissa Medina-Flores,Robert Jadin

doi:10.3897/zookeys.298.4834

Abstract

A new species of palm-pitviper of the genus Bothriechis is described from Refugio de Vida Silvestre Texíguat in northern Honduras. The new species differs from congeners by having 19 dorsal scale rows at midbody, a bright green dorsal coloration in adults, the prelacunal scale fused to the second supralabial, and in representing a northern lineage that is sister to Bothriechis lateralis, which is distributed in Costa Rica and western Panama and is isolated from the new taxon by the Nicaraguan Depression. This represents the 15th endemic species occurring in Refugio de Vida Silvestre Texíguat, one of the richest herpetofaunal sites in Honduras, itself being the country with the highest degree of herpetofaunal endemism in Central America. We name this new species in honor of a Honduran conservationist slain in fighting against illegal logging, highlighting the sacrifices of rural activists in battling these issues and the critical importance of conservation in these areas.

Highlights

In the past decade, a steady stream of taxonomic discoveries have come out of the Chortís Highlands of Mesoamerica, a biogeographic region found to the south and east of the tectonic boundary between the Chortís and Mayan Blocks and north of the Nicaraguan Depression (Townsend 2011, Townsend et al 2011)
Three species of endemic pitvipers have been described from the Chortís Highlands since 2000: Atropoides indomitus Smith & Ferrari-Castro 2008, Bothriechis thalassinus Campbell & Smith 2000, and Cerrophidion wilsoni Jadin, Townsend, Castoe & Campbell 2012
Our phylogeny (Fig. 1) is generally congruent with those of Castoe et al (2009) and Daza et al (2010), recovering two clades of nominal Bothriechis schlegelii rendered paraphyletic with respect to B. supraciliaris, and showing strong support for a B. marchi–B. thalassinus clade and a B. aurifer–B. rowleyi clade, together forming a B. aurifer–B. bicolor–B. marchi–B. rowleyi–B. thalassinus clade that geographically corresponds to Nuclear Central America (Fig. 1)

Summary

Introduction

A steady stream of taxonomic discoveries have come out of the Chortís Highlands of Mesoamerica, a biogeographic region found to the south and east of the tectonic boundary between the Chortís and Mayan Blocks and north of the Nicaraguan Depression (Townsend 2011, Townsend et al 2011). Three species of endemic pitvipers have been described from the Chortís Highlands since 2000: Atropoides indomitus Smith & Ferrari-Castro 2008, Bothriechis thalassinus Campbell & Smith 2000, and Cerrophidion wilsoni Jadin, Townsend, Castoe & Campbell 2012. Two of these three taxa, B. thalassinus and C. wilsoni, had previously been concealed within more widespread taxa only to be revealed by more focused sampling and phylogenetic analyses. A relict lineage and new species of green palm-pitviper (Squamata, Viperidae, Bothriechis)...

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