Dendrelaphis proarchos (WALL, 1909)
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Dendrelaphis proarchos
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| Higher Taxa | Colubridae, Ahaetuliinae, Colubroidea, Caenophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes) |
| Subspecies | |
| Common Names | |
| Synonym | Dendrophis proarchos WALL 1909: 347 Dendrophis proarchos WALL 1910: 827 Dendrophis proarchus (sic) — WALL 1921:157 Dendrelaphis pictus pictus — WHITAKER & CAPTAIN 2004:174 (part.) Dendrelaphis proarchos — VOGEL & VAN ROOIJEN 2011 Dendrelaphis proarchos — DAS 2012 Dendrelaphis proarchos — PURKAYASTHA 2013 Dendrelaphis proarchos — HAKIM et al. 2020 |
| Distribution | India (Arunachal Pradesh [A. Captain, pers. comm.], Mizoram), Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, China Type locality: Darjeeling (Wall, 1909); ‘‘Sadiya’’ (also Sadia, a small town in the Tinsukia District), ‘‘north Lakhimpur (Dejoo) (a tea estate near the city in Lakhimpur district in the state of Assam), Doom Dooma (a town in Tinsukia district), and Dibrugarh (a small town along the Brahmaputra River’’ (all in the northeastern Indian state of Assam). |
| Reproduction | oviparous |
| Types | Syntpes: lost, possibly in BNHS but not there (Vogel & Rooijen 2011). Wall 1910 mentioned 24 syntypes. 2 or more were sent to BMNH, including BMNH 1908.6.23.27, adult female. |
| Diagnosis | Diagnosis (proarchos): A species of Dendrelaphis, characterized by the combination of (1) vertebral scales enlarged, smaller than or equal to the dorsals of the first row; (2) 173–198 ventrals; (3) 138–156 divided subcaudals; (4) 15 dorsal scale rows at midbody; (5) anal shield undivided in 40% of specimens; (6) one loreal scale; (7) two or three supralabials touching the eye; (8) a short first sublabial that touches two infralabials in the majority of specimens; (9) 6–16 temporal scales; (10) two to three postoculars; (11) maximum total length 121.0 cm; (12) Rel TAIL 0.30–0.36; (13) a black temporal stripe that starts behind the eye, covers the majority of the temporal region and extends onto the neck; (14) a bright, light ventrolateral stripe bordered by one or two black lines. Holotype.—Not located, but see discussion in VOGEL & VAN ROOIJEN 2011. |
| Comment | Synonymy. Wall (1909) announced the description of a new species in a future paper on snakes of Assam. Unfortunately, he described one specimen in detail along with the species’ intended name, D. proarchos. The description provided by him in a subsequent paper (Wall, 1910) must be regarded as secondary homonym and, thus, a synonym of D. proarchos Wall, 1909 (ICZN, 1999). For unknown reasons, Wall named this same species D. proarchus (sic) in 1921 (Vogel & Rooijen 2011). Most indochinese populations were considered as D. pictus in much of recent history and only VOGEL & VAN ROOIJEN 2011 revalidated D. proarchos (Wall, 1909) to represent the populations from northeast India, Myanmar, southern China (Hengduan mountains), north Laos, and north Vietnam. Similar species: D. pictus, see also this species. Behavior: diurnal Habitat: fully arboreal (Harrington et al. 2018, by implication) Type species: Dendrophis proarchos WALL 1909: 347 is the type species of the genus Dendrelaphis WALL 1909. |
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