The Status of the Mexican Snake Genus Schmidtophis Taylor (Colubridae)

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During a preliminary study of the herpetofauna of the pine-oak forests of eastern Queretaro, Mexico, the second known specimen of the monotypic genus Schmidtophis Taylor was collected. In his description of the genus, Taylor (1949) utilized maxillary teeth decreasing in size posteriorly, absence of an anterior temporal, scale rows of 15-15-15, and mental separated from chin shields by first pair of infralabials, as a basis for not including the specimen in the genus Chersodromus. Since Taylor's description, one species of Chersodromus has been described by Zweifel (1954), but subsequently placed in the genus Tropidodipsas by Scott (1967). Based on the variation occurring in these characters among the genus Geophis (Downs, 1967), we provisionally place Schmidtophis as a junior synonym of Chersodromus thus establishing a second species of the latter genus to be known as Chersodromus rubriventris (Taylor).