Abstract
We report on the first definite record of the False Tree Coral Snake, Rhinobothryum bovallii (Andersson, 1916), from Nicaragua based on one specimen from the Refugio Bartola, department of Río San Juan, southeastern Nicaragua. The newly found specimen narrows a 510 km distributional gap between occurrences from near the Honduran–Nicaraguan border and the nearest occurrence in Costa Rica.
Highlights
The False Tree Coral Snake, Rhinobothryum bovallii (Andersson, 1916), is a rare, slender, and long nocturnal snake, which is characterized by the contrasting coloration on its head, where each shield on the dorsal surface has a black blotch edged with white or cream (Savage 2002, Köhler 2008)
This species is known to occur on the Atlantic versant from eastern Honduras to northwestern Venezuela, and on the Pacific versant from central Panama to northwestern Ecuador, from sea level to 2,000 m elevation (Savage 2002, Solórzano 2004, Köhler 2008, Arredondo et al 2017, Pazmiño-Otamendi 2017, Turcios-Casco et al 2018)
All morphological characters of UMMZ 247120 match with the available descriptions of R. bovallii with 2 exceptions (Savage 2002, Lotzkat 2014): 238 ventral scales and 114 paired subcaudals. We consider that these minor differences are close enough to the documented variability of R. bovallii
Summary
The False Tree Coral Snake, Rhinobothryum bovallii (Andersson, 1916), is a rare, slender, and long nocturnal snake, which is characterized by the contrasting coloration on its head, where each shield on the dorsal surface has a black blotch edged with white or cream (Savage 2002, Köhler 2008). Rhinobothryum bovallii is a tricolored (red-white/yellow-black) ringed coral snake-mimic This species mimics the sympatric Micrurus alleni Schmidt, 1936 and M. nigrocinctus (Girard, 1855) and is part of the mimetic complex of the genera Erythrolamprus Boie, 1826, Oxyrhopus Wagler, 1830, and Pliocercus Cope, 1860 found in the neotropics (Turcios-Casco et al 2018, Uetz et al 2018). This species of snake is opisthoglyphous and feeds predominantly on lizards, frogs, and small mammals.
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