Revalidated after having been described more than a century ago: Calamaria berezowskii Günther, 1896 (Squamata, Colubridae) from Sichuan, Southwestern China

By

Liang, Yating
Huang, Zidan
Ding, Li
Vogel, Gernot
Ananʹeva, N. B.
Orlov, Nikolai L.
Shi, Shengchao
Wu, Zhengjun
Chen, Zening

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2024-07-05

Original Publication

Zoosystematics and evolution

Volume

100

Pages

897--911

Subjects

Calamaria berezowskii , Colubridae , Morphology , phylogenetics , taxonomy

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.100.125798

 

Abstract

The reed snakes of the genus Calamaria Boie, 1827 are one of the largest groups of Asian snakes, distributed from northeast India to the Maluku Islands of east Indonesia. Recent research on the genus in China has revealed that the species diversity of the group was underestimated. In this study, morphological comparisons and mitochondrial DNA analysis revealed that a junior synonym of C. pavimentata Duméril, Bibron & Duméril, 1854 — Calamaria berezowskii Günther, 1896 is valid, hence we redescribed and recovered the validity of C. berezowskii. This species can be distinguished from other congeners by the combination of the following characters: four supralabials; one preocular; rostral shield width larger than height; mental not touching anterior chin shields; eye diameter less than the distance from eye to mouth edge; less than 1/2 of the posterior chin shield meets in the midline; dorsal scales reduced to six rows at tail; indistinct light ring present in the nuchal region or a more or less distinct yellowish collar. Phylogenetically, this species is sister to C. pavimentata, with significant genetic differences (0.190) on mitochondrial gene Cyt b.