A ‘Crikey’ new snake: An insular Lycodon Fitzinger, 1826 (Squamata, Colubridae) from the Nicobar Archipelago, India

By

Naveen, R.S.
Mirza, Zeeshan
Choure, Girish
Chandramouli, S R

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2025-11-7

Original Publication

Evolutionary systematics

Volume

9

Series / Issue

Issue: 2

Pages

221--228

Subjects

Colubridae , Conservation , Island , Phylogeny , Sundaland , systematics , taxonomy , wolf snakes

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Hamburg Centrum für Naturkunde (CeNak) 2017-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/evolsyst.9.170645

 

Abstract

<br> The Nicobar Archipelago, a biodiversity hotspot in the Bay of Bengal, harbours several poorly studied and endemic reptile lineages. Several species of snakes from these islands are known to science with just one or a handful of specimens. One such taxon, historically identified as<br> Lycodon subcinctus<br> Boie, 1827, has remained taxonomically unresolved, known only from a single sighting on Great Nicobar Island to date. Recent taxonomic revisions of the<br> L. subcinctus<br> complex enabled us to reassess the status of the population from the Nicobar Islands. Studies suggested that the species is distinct, and a re-examination of museum material and newly collected specimens, combined with molecular analyses, confirms the distinctiveness of the species and is here described as a new species,<br> Lycodon irwini<br> sp. nov.<br> Given its rarity and restriction to Great Nicobar Island, and taking into account potential threats we recommend that the new species be classified as ‘Endangered’ under the IUCN Red List criteria.<br>