Abstract
The Saw-scaled vipers (SSV) of the genus Echis (Viperidae: Ophidia) primarily inhabit tropics. In Sri Lanka, E. carinatus is densely populated in the Northern Province where they account for over 50% of the local snakebites. Although it was initially reported as a unique Sri Lankan subspecies named E. c. sinhaleyus, its existence was later questioned, urging the need for more detail studies. The present study examined morphological characters and sexual dimorphism in 30 specimens (17 males and 13 females) collected from Kilinochchi and Jaffna Districts in the Northern Province, using 12 mensural and 17 meristic traits, updating Deraniyagala’s report of 1951. Results showed that the adult females have longer snout to vent length (SVL) than that of males (280.34±43.32 vs. 240.88±27.03), revealing a positive sexual dimorphism index. Males had a greater TL/SVL ratio (x̄̄=13.89±0.68) than that of females (x̄̄=10.65±085). ANCOVA test retrieved most accurate and an independent significant effect of ‘sex’ on TL while SVL serving as the covariate. Males and females shared consistent meristic characters, except for number of dorsal scales at the lower part of the body, ventral and sub-caudal scales. There were more ventral scales in females (145.54±3.31) than that of males (138.41±4.08), and sub-caudal scales were higher in number in males (28.94±1.85) than that of females (25.85±2.82). Although, there were some colour pattern variations of the specimens, (head pattern and ventral pattern), they were not sex-associated and distributed evenly between males and females. This is the first study to illustrate the detail morphometric characters; mensural traits; meristic traits, and color patterns and to demonstrate the sexual dimorphism in the SSV from Sri Lanka, with noticeable differences in the snoutvent length (SVL), tail length (TL), ventral scales, and sub-caudal scales between male and female.
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