A ‘little dragon’ from Kunming City: a new green pit viper from Yunnan Province, China (Squamata, Viperidae, Trimeresurus)

By

Xu, Yuhao
Deng, Jundong
Zhang, Tierui
Nguyen, Tan
Weng, Shiyang
Poyarkov, Nikolay
Vogel, Gernot
Sun, Fanyue
Liao, Chencan
Peng, Lifang

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2025-11-18

Original Publication

Zoosystematics and evolution

Volume

101

Series / Issue

Issue: 4

Pages

2267--2293

Subjects

Hemipenis , molecular phylogeny , Morphology , southwestern China , systematics , taxonomy , Trimeresurus loong sp. nov.

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.101.175879

 

Abstract

<br> A new species of the genus<br> Trimeresurus<br> Lacépède is described from Kunming City, Yunnan Province, China, based on an integrative analysis of morphological and molecular data. The new species,<br> Trimeresurus loong<br> sp. nov.<br> , is assigned to the subgenus Viridovipera Malhotra &amp; Thorpe and can be distinguished from its congeners by the following combination of characters: the first supralabial completely separated from the nasal scale; a short and spinose hemipenis; moderate adult body size; dorsal scales in 19 (21 or 23)-19-15 rows; 150–151 ventral scales in males, and 157–158 in females; 67–68 subcaudals in males, and 57–64 in females; and distinct body color patterns. Molecular analyses based on the mitochondrial<br> 16S<br> , cyt<br> b<br> , and<br> ND4<br> gene fragments indicate that<br> Trimeresurus loong<br> sp. nov.<br> is genetically divergent from all currently recognized congeners, showing uncorrected<br> p<br> -distances ranging from 6.7–11.2% in cyt<br> b<br> and 6.1–8.3% in<br> ND4<br> . The discovery of this species brings the total number of recognized<br> Trimeresurus<br> species to 57, including nine recorded from Yunnan Province, further emphasizing the complex topography and exceptional level of endemism.<br>