A Cryptic New Species Of Indigo Snake (Genus Drymarchon) From The Florida Platform Of The United States

Keywords

Colubridae; D. Couperi; D. Melanurus; Drymarchon kolpobasileus sp. Nov.; Indigo snakes; Morphology; Phy-logenetics; Pleistocene; Pliocene; Serpentes; United States

Abstract

Indigo Snakes (genus Drymarchon) occur from northern Argentina northward into to the United States, where they inhabit southern Texas and disjunct populations in Mississippi, Florida and Georgia. Based on allopatry and morphological dif-ferences Collins (1991) hypothesized that the two United States taxa- The Western Indigo Snake, D. melanurus erebennus (Cope, 1860), and the Eastern Indigo Snake, D. couperi (Holbrook, 1842)-deserved full species recognition. Building upon this hypothesis with molecular and morphological analyses we illustrate that D. couperi is split into two distinct lin-eages. Based on the General Lineage Concept of Species, we describe the lineage that occurs along the Gulf coast of Flor-ida and Mississippi as a new species, Drymarchon kolpobasileus. The new species is distinguished from D. couperi by a suite of morphological features, including a shorter and shallower head, deeper and shorter 7th infralabial scales, and short-er temporal scales. Overall, the presence of a deep 7th infralabial scale provides the best univariate identifier of D. kol-pobasileus sp. nov. This study illustrates the usefulness of using both morphological and genetic data in refining accurate descriptions of geographical distributions.

Publication Date

7-18-2016

Publication Title

Zootaxa

Volume

4138

Issue

3

Number of Pages

549-569

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4138.3.9

Socpus ID

85047290656 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85047290656

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