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A new species of Dipsas Laurenti, 1768, from Central Panama is described based on molecular analyses, hemipenial morphology, and external characters. This is the sixth species of Dipsas to be described for the country; the snake has been suspected to exist since 1977 and has not been thoroughly studied until now. Additionally, morphological comparations including scale counts are done with other species within the genus, and the current geographic distribution of Dipsas temporalis (Werner, 1909), the sister species, is updated. Finally, a key to the species of Dipsas currently known from Middle America is presented.

Colour polymorphism has been previously reported in several colubrid snakes including Boiga spp. In this paper, we report colour variations within the poorly known southern Indian Boiga dightoni, provide the first molecular data for this species, from two localities (including the type locality) and compare them with data from other congeners. Additionally, we provide detailed dentition and hemipenis descriptions for B. dightoni. Molecular data for B. dightoni show very little difference (0.2–0.4% 16S; 0.9–1.2% cyt b) to the recently described Boiga whitakeri, also from southern India. We have re-examined and present new information on the pholidosis of the type specimens of B. whitakeri and reconsider its taxonomic status. On the basis of molecular data and overlapping morphological characteristics, we argue that Boiga whitakeri and Boiga dightoni are conspecific, and place B. whitakeri under the subjective synonymy of the latter. Furthermore, we show that colour polymorphism in B. dightoni is a gender-independent character and that both colour morphs are found in high as well as low elevations and partly in sympatry. A revised key to the Boiga ceylonensis complex is provided.

Boiga melanota (Boulenger, 1896) — Native. Dipsadomorphus dendrophilus var. B. (var. melanotus, Bleeker) Boulenger, 1896: 71. Holotype: BMNH 1946.1.4.91, by original designation. Type locality: “ Sumatra ”, Indonesia; later restricted to the “East Coast of Sumatra ”, Indonesia by Brongersma (1934: 208). Gold-ringed Cat Snake (Figure 18D) Singapore records. Dipsas dendrophila — Cantor, 1847b: 923.— Cantor, 1847c: 1070, 1077.— Ģnther, 1864: 311.— Dennys, 1880a: 3.— Blanford, 1881: 215.— Davison, 1892: 89, 92. Dipsadomorphus dendrophilus var. melanotus — Boulenger, 1896: 71. Dipsadomorphus dendrophilus — Flower, 1896: 889.— Flower, 1899: 680.—Ridley, 1899: 199, 209 (“Sirangoon [Serangoon] River ”).—Hanitsch, 1908: 44 (Serangoon).—Hanitsch, 1914: 5 (Thomson Road).— de Rooij, 1917: 197. Dipsadomorphus dendrophilus var. B— Hanitsch, 1898: 20.— Hanitsch, 1912b: 16. Boiga dendrophila (non H. Boie in F. Boie, 1827)—Sworder, 1923: 66.—Sworder, 1924a: 20 (Pulau Senang).—Smith, 1930: 65.—Smith, 1943: 529.—Tweedie, 1949: 5.—Sharma, 1973: 235.—L.M. Chou et al., 1980: 71.—K. Lim, 1989b: 19 (Sime Road Forest).—K. Lim, 1989e: 38 (Sime Road Forest).— Gopalakrishnakone, 1990: 3.—K. Lim, 1990a: 8 (“pumping station road which separates Upper Peirce and Lower Peirce Reservoirs” [OUTR]).—K.K.P. Lim & L.M. Chou, 1990: 54.— F.L.K. Lim, 1991: 70.—K.K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 1992: 73, 147.—Wee, 1992: 74 (Lower Peirce Reservoir Park).—L.M. Chou et al., 1994: 105.—R. Subaraj, 1994: 12 (MacRitchie Golf Course Trail [MNF]; Upper Peirce West Forest).—J.K.Y. Low et al., 1994: 158.—R. Subaraj et al., 1995: 3 (Lower Peirce [LPF]).—K. Lim et al., 1995: 14 (Old Upper Thomson Road).—K. Lim, 1995: 16 (Hindhede Drive).—R.C.H. Teo & Rajathurai, 1997: 379 (Lower Peirce East Forest [LPF]; Lower Peirce West Forest [LPF]; MacRitchie North Forest; Taban & Lasia Valleys [BTNR]; Upper Peirce West Forest).— Cox et al., 1998: 75.— Das, 1998: 65.—Chan-ard et al., 1999: 30.—K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 2002: 147.— Anonymous, 2003: 92 (Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve).— de Lang & Vogel, 2005: 97.—N. Baker & K.P. Lim, 2008: 95, 160.—K.K.P. Lim et al., 2008: 264.—P.K.L. Ng et al., 2008: 168.—T.M. Leong et al., 2009: 487.— Das, 2010: 261.—M.A.H. Chua, 2011: 281 (Semakau Landfill [PS]).—L.L. Grismer, 2011a: 173.—P.K.L. Ng et al., 2011: 272.—N. Baker & K.P. Lim, 2012: 95, 160.— Das, 2012a: 22.—M.F.C. Ng, 2012: 146 (Semakau Landfill [PS]).— Chim, 2014: 112, 113 (Saint John’s Island).—M.A.H. Chua, 2014d: 196 (“forest area west of Mandai Lake Road” [Mandai]).—Wallach et al., 2014: 102.—Weinstein et al., 2014: 214.—Chan-ard et al., 2015: 211.—M.A.H. Chua, 2015b: 187 (Lower Peirce Reservoir).—R. Subaraj, 2015: 55 (Mandai Range Forest).—S. Subaraj, 2015: 5 (Singapore Zoo).—K.K.P. Lim et al., 2016: 181 (Pulau Tekong).— Das, 2018: 29.— Mao et al., 2019: 115.—Sankar & Harrick, 2019: 48.—R.C.H. Teo & Thomas, 2019: 161, 180 (Bukit Timah Nature Reserve; Pulau Ubin).—M.L. Kwak & A. Ng, 2022: 929. Boiga (Dipsadomorphus) dendrophilus — Buddle, 1929: 22, 30 (Sembawang Naval Base [= SML]). Boiga dendrophila melanota — de Haas, 1950: 581.—F.L.K. Lim & M.T.-M. Lee, 1989: 116.—E.K. Chua, 1993: 99.— David & Vogel, 1996: 65.— Manthey & Grossmann, 1997: 321.— Iskandar & Colijn, 2001: 38.— Charlton, 2020: 142. Boiga dendrophilia [sic]—E.K. Chua, 2015: 136. Boiga melanota —K.H. Koh & Chanani-Parikh, 2021: 2. Remarks. In a recent study, Weinell et al. (2020b) showed that subspecies of B. dendrophila are paraphyletic and elevated B. dendrophila melanota to full species. Based on this redesignation, populations from Singapore, Peninsular Malaysia, southern Thailand, Vietnam and Bangka, Belitung, Riau Archipelago, and Sumatra in Indonesia are now recognised as B. melanota (see David & Vogel 1996). Cantor (1847b) first reported B. melanota from Singapore, likely from specimens collected by Hardwicke or Dennys (Boulenger 1896). Ridley (1899) and Sworder (1923) described B. melanota as very common, particularly along mangroves and the Serangoon River.After Buddle (1929) collected two at SNB and Tweedie (1949) received a specimen from Romer, B. melanota was next recorded 40 years later (Table 2) when one was seen at SRF on 30 June 1989 (Lim 1989b). Boiga melanota was reported several times during the 1990s (e.g., Lim 1990a; Subaraj 1994; Lim et al. 1995), and Teo & Rajathurai (1997) recorded 13 individuals during their study; yet, they categorised it as rare, a perception shared by Baker & Lim (2012). However, given these records and personal records, we choose to recognise B. melanota as common. Being a species associated with aquatic habitats, particularly mangroves, B. melanota is known to inhabit several of Singapore’s offshore islands, including Pulau Pawai (ZRC.2.4487), Pulau Senang (Sworder 1924a), PU (Teo & Thomas 2019), PT (Lim et al. 2016), Saint John’s Island (Chim 2014), and Pulau Semakau (Ng 2012). Occurrence. Wide-ranging. Common. Singapore conservation status. Near-Threatened. Conservation priority. Moderate. IUCN conservation status. Not Evaluated. LKCNHM & NHMUK Museum specimens. Singapore (no locality): BMNH 1860.3.19.1235 (no date), BMNH 1965 (no date), ZRC.2.4494 (02-Jun-1919), ZRC.2.4491 (Sep-1927), ZRC.2.6363 (1986); Alligator Island [= Pulau Pawai] : ZRC.2.4487 (no date); Bukit Kalang Service Reservoir [SRF] : ZRC.2.6914 (12-May-2010); Central Catchment: ZRC.2.7232 (02-Feb-2007); Changi: ZRC.2.4489 (Feb-1928); Jalan Lada Hitam: ZRC.2.6794 (26-Nov-2008); MacRitchie Forest [LF]: ZRC.2.7231 (01-Nov-2006); Mandai Road Track 7: ZRC.2.7303 (02-Jul-2018); Nee Soon Swamp Forest: ZRC.2.7086 (22-Nov-2014); Old Upper Thomson Road: ZRC.2.5538, ZRC.2.6133 (09-Oct-2002), ZRC.2.6094 (18-Sep-2004), ZRC.2.7064 (07- Apr-2014); Pulau Senang: ZRC.2.4484 (Jun-1951); Pulau Ubin: ZRC.2.4488 (13-Mar-1921); Sime Road Forest: ZRC.2.5626 (15-Jan-2003); St. John’s Island: ZRC.2.7010 (21-May-2013). Additional Singapore museum specimens. Singapore (no locality): AMNH, CAS, MCZ, NMW, SMNS, UMMZ, USNM, ZMO. Singapore localities. Bukit Timah Nature Reserve—Changi—Chestnut Nature Park—Hindhede Drive—Jalan Lada Hitam—Lornie Forest—Lower Peirce Forest—Lower Peirce Reservoir Park—MacRitchie North Forest— Mandai (not specified)—Mandai Range Forest—Mandai Road Track 7—Nee Soon Swamp Forest—Old Upper Thomson Road—Pulau Pawai—Pulau Semakau—Pulau Senang—Pulau Tekong—Pulau Ubin— Saint John’s Island—Sembcorp Marine Ltd.*—Serangoon—Sime Road Forest— Singapore Zoo—Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve—Sungei Serangoon—Thomson Road—Upper Peirce West Forest. Genus Coelognathus Fitzinger, 1843 (1 species) Calopeltis (Coelognathus) Fitzinger, 1843: 26 (type species: Coluber radiatus H. Boie in F. Boie, 1827, by original designation; gender masculine)., Published as part of Figueroa, Alex, Low, Martyn E. Y. & Lim, Kelvin K. P., 2023, Singapore's herpetofauna: updated and annotated checklist, history, conservation, and distribution, pp. 1-378 in Zootaxa 5287 (1) on pages 157-159, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5287.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7960319, {"references":["Boulenger, G. A. (1896) Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum (Natural History). Vol. III. Containing the Colubridae (Opisthoglyphae and Proteroglyphae), Amblycephalidae and Viperidae. British Museum (Natural History), London, xiv + 727 pp., 25 pls.","Brongersma, L. D. (1934) Contributions to Indo-Australian herpetology. Zoologische Mededelingen, 17, 161 - 251.","Cantor, T. E. (1847 b) Catalogue of reptiles inhabiting the Malayan Peninsula and islands, collected or observed by Theodore Cantor, Esq., M. D. Bengal Medical Service. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 16 (Part 2, No. 182), 897 - 952, pl. 40. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 5057","Cantor, T. E. (1847 c) Catalogue of reptiles inhabiting the Malayan Peninsula and islands, collected or observed by Theodore Cantor, Esq., M. D. Bengal Medical Service. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 16 (Part 2, No. 183), 1026 - 1078. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 5057","Gnther, A. C. L. G. (1864) The Reptiles of British India. Trustees [of the British Museum], London, xxvii + 452 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 5012","Dennys, N. B. (1880 a) The snakes of Singapore I. Singapore Daily Times, 20 December 1880, 2 - 3.","Blanford, W. T. (1881) On a collection of reptiles and frogs chiefly from Singapore. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1881 (1), 215 - 226, pls. 20 - 21. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 101596","Davison, W. (1892) The snakes of Singapore. Singapore and Straits Directory, 1892, 87 - 93.","Flower, S. S. (1896) Notes on a collection of reptiles and batrachians made in the Malay Peninsula in 1895 - 96; with a list of the species recorded from that region. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1896 (4), 856 - 914, pls. 44 - 46.","Flower, S. S. (1899 b) Notes on a second collection of reptiles made in the Malay Peninsula and Siam, from November 1896 - September 1898, with a list of the species recorded from those countries. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1899 (4), 600 - 696, pls. 36 - 37.","de Rooij, N. (1917) The Reptiles of the Indo-Australian Archipelago. II. Ophidia. E. J. Brill, Leiden, xiv + 334 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 10610","Hanitsch, R. (1898) Annual report of the curator and librarian on the Raffles Library and Museum, for the Year Ending 31 st December, 1897. In: Straits Settlements, Annual Reports for the Year 1898. Published by Authority, Singapore, pp. 11 - 22.","Hanitsch, R. (1912 b) List of the Birds, Reptiles and Amphibians in the Raffles Museum, Singapore. Raffles Library and Museum, Singapore, 19 pp.","Chou L. M., Ho, S. H., Khoo, H. W., Lam, T. J., Murphy, D. H. & Tan, W. H. (1980) The Present State of Mangrove Ecosystems in Southeast Asia and the Impact of Pollution - Singapore. South China Sea Fisheries Development and Coordinating Programme, Manila. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and United Nations Environment Programme, SCS / 80 / WP / 94 d (Rev.), pp. i - vi + 1 - 76.","Lim, K. (1989 e) Reptiles - Snakes & Lizards. The Pangolin, 2 (3), 38 - 39.","Gopalakrishnakone, P. (1990) A Colour Guide to Dangerous Animals. Singapore University Press, Singapore, 156 pp.","Lim, K. (1990 a) Reptiles. The Pangolin, 3 (1 - 4), 6 - 12.","Lim, K. K. P. & Lim, F. L. K. (1992) A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Singapore. Singapore Science Centre, Singapore, 160 pp.","Chou L. M., Ng, P. K. L. & Lim, K. K. P. (1994) Animalia. In: Wee, Y. C. & Ng, P. K. L. (Eds.), A First Look at Biodiversity in Singapore. National Council on the Environment, Singapore, pp. 70 - 106.","Low, J. K. Y., Arshad, A. & Lim, K. H. (1994) Mangroves as a habitat for endangered species and biodiversity conservation. In: Wilkinson, C., Sudara, S. & Ming, C. L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Third ASEAN-Australia Symposium on Living Coastal Resources: Status Reviews. Vol. 1. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, 16 - 20 May 1994. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, pp. 157 - 169.","Cox, M. J., van Dijk, P. P., Nabhitabhata, J. & Thirakhupt, K. (1998) A Photographic Guide toSnakes and other Reptiles of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. New Holland Publishers, London, 144 pp.","Das, I. (1998) A new species of Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the Nicobar Archipelago. Journal of South Asian Natural History, 3 (1), 59 - 67.","Lim, K. P. & Lim, F. L. K. (2002) A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Singapore. Revised Edition. Singapore Science Centre, Singapore, 160 pp.","Anonymous (2003) Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve - A Decade of Wetland Conservation. National Parks Board, Singapore, 98 pp.","de Lang, R. & Vogel, G. (2005) The Snakes of Sulawesi: A Field Guide to the Land Snakes of Sulawesi with Identification Keys. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, 312 pp.","Das, I. (2010) A Field Guide to the Reptiles of Thailand and South-East Asia. New Holland, London, 376 pp.","Chua, M. A. (2011) The herpetofauna and mammals of Semakau Landfill: A Project Semakau checklist. Nature in Singapore, 4, 277 - 287.","Grismer, L. L. (2011 a) Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Seribuat Archipelago (Peninsular Malaysia). Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, 239 pp.","Das, I. (2012 a) A Naturalist's Guide to the Snakes of South-East Asia. John Beaufoy Publishing, Oxford, 160 pp.","Chim C. K. (2014) Snakes of Saint John's Island. Singapore Biodiversity Records, 2014, 112 - 114.","Chua, M. A. H. (2014 d) Gold-ringed cat snake at Mandai. Singapore Biodiversity Records, 2014, 196.","Chua, M. A. H. (2015 b) Gold-ringed cat snake at Lower Peirce forest. Singapore Biodiversity Records, 2015, 187.","Lim, K. K. P., Chua, M. A. H. & Lim, N. T. - L. (2016) Freshwater fishes, terrestrial herpetofauna and mammals of Pulau Tekong, Singapore. Nature in Singapore, 9, 165 - 198.","Das, I. (2018) A Naturalist's Guide to the Snakes of Southeast Asia. 2 nd Edition. John Beaufoy Publishing, Oxford, 176 pp.","Mao, J. J., Norval, G., Robbins, R. G. & Te Wong, S. (2019) An instance of Boiga dendrophila dendrophila (Boie 1827) (Reptilia: Colubridae) being parasitized by Amblyomma helvolum Koch, 1844 (Acari: Ixodidae), with comments about the attachment sites of this tick species. Acarologia, 59 (1), 115 - 119. https: // doi. org / 10.24349 / acarologia / 20194316","Buddle, R. (1929) Snakes of Singapore Island. Kelly & Walsh, Limited, Singapore, 48 pp.","de Haas, C. P. J. (1950) Checklist of the snakes of the Indo-Australian Archipelago (Reptiles, Ophidia). Treubia, 20 (3), 511 - 625.","Chua, E. K. (1993) Nature in Singapore, Ours to Protect. The Nature Society, Singapore, 132 pp.","David, P. & Vogel, G. (1996) The Snakes of Sumatra: An Annotated Checklist and Key with Natural History Notes. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt-am-Main, 260 pp.","Manthey, U. & Grossmann, W. (1997) Amphibien und Reptilian Sudostasien. Natur und Tier, M ¸ nster, 512 pp.","Iskandar, D. T. & Colijn, E. (2001) A Checklist of Southeast Asian and New Guinean Reptiles. Part I. Serpentes. Biodiversity Conservation Project (Indonesian Institute of Sciences - Japan International Cooperation Agency - The Ministry of Forestry). The Gibbon Foundation and Institute of Technology, Bandung, 195 pp.","Charlton, T. (2020) A Guide to Snakes of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. Natural History Publications (Borneo) Sdn. Bhd., Kota Kinabalu, viii + 299 pp.","Koh, K. H. & Chanani-Parikh, I. (2021) Biodiversity Record: Predation of dog-faced water snake and shore pit-viper by king cobra. Nature in Singapore, 14 (e 2021138), 1 - 3.","Baker, N. & Lim, K. P. (2012) Wild Animals of Singapore: A Photographic Guide to Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians and Freshwater Fishes. Updated Edition. Draco Publishing and Distribution Pte Ltd and Nature Society, Singapore, 180 pp."]}

Boiga drapiezii (H. Boie in F. Boie, 1827)— Native. Dipsas Drapiezii H. Boie in F. Boie, 1827: 549. Holotype: RMNH.RENA.1006, by original designation. Type locality: “ Java ”, Indonesia. White-spotted Cat Snake (Figure 18B) Singapore records. Dipsadomorphus drapiezii — Boulenger, 1896: 74.— Flower, 1896: 889 (Bukit Timah [BTNR]).—Ridley, 1899: 209.— Boulenger, 1912: 171.— de Rooij, 1917: 197. Boiga drapiezii —Sworder, 1923: 67.— de Haas, 1950: 582.—Taylor, 1965: 867.—F.L.K. Lim & M.T.-M. Lee, 1989: 117.—K.K.P. Lim & L.M. Chou, 1990: 54.—K.K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 1992: 147.— L.M. Chou et al., 1994: 105.—L.M. Chou, 1995: 148.— David & Vogel, 1996: 67.— Manthey & Grossmann, 1997: 322.— Cox et al., 1998: 73.—Chan-ard et al., 1999: 30.— Iskandar & Colijn, 2001: 39.—K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 2002: 147.—N. Baker & K.P. Lim, 2008: 169.—T.M. Leong et al., 2009: 487–492 (Nee Soon Swamp Forest).— Das, 2010: 262.—L.L. Grismer, 2011a: 175.— T.M. Leong & J.W.M. Gan, 2011: 30.—N. Baker & K.P. Lim, 2012: 169.— Das, 2012a: 23.—L.K. Wang et al., 2012: 249.—Stuebing et al., 2014: 144.—Wallach et al., 2014: 103.—Chan-ard et al., 2015: 209.—Thomas, Serin & I.S. Law, 2016: 1–2 (Upper Seletar [NSSF]).— de Lang, 2017: 108.— Das, 2018: 30.— Charlton, 2020: 143.—I.S. Law et al., 2020: 167.—K.H. Koh, 2022: 1 (“north-western edge of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve”). Boiga drapiezii ssp.— Leviton et al., 2018: 431. Remarks. Having first been documented in Singapore in 1896 by a specimen in NHMUK (Boulenger 1896) and one observed in BTNR by Flower (1896), B. drapiezii was rediscovered in Singapore 113 years later (Table 2) when one was found on 14 November 2009 at NSSF (Fig. 18B) (Leong et al. 2009). In between this time, very few publications included Singapore in the range of B. drapiezii. After its rediscovery, B. drapiezii was only reported twice more, once on 17 July 2015 at NSSF (Thomas et al. 2016), and more recently on 22 January 2022 at the northwestern edge of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. Clearly, B. drapiezii is the rarest Boiga in Singapore. Occurrence. Known from one museum specimen, one observation from 1896 in BTNR, and two recent observations in NSSF. Rare. Singapore conservation status. Critically Endangered. Conservation priority. Highest. IUCN conservation status. Least Concern [2013]. LKCNHM & NHMUK Museum specimens. Singapore (no locality): BMNH 1882.11.27.5 (no date). Additional Singapore museum specimens. No specimens. Singapore localities. Bukit Timah Nature Reserve—Central Catchment Nature Reserve—Nee Soon Swamp Forest., Published as part of Figueroa, Alex, Low, Martyn E. Y. & Lim, Kelvin K. P., 2023, Singapore's herpetofauna: updated and annotated checklist, history, conservation, and distribution, pp. 1-378 in Zootaxa 5287 (1) on pages 155-156, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5287.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7960319, {"references":["Boulenger, G. A. (1896) Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum (Natural History). Vol. III. Containing the Colubridae (Opisthoglyphae and Proteroglyphae), Amblycephalidae and Viperidae. British Museum (Natural History), London, xiv + 727 pp., 25 pls.","Flower, S. S. (1896) Notes on a collection of reptiles and batrachians made in the Malay Peninsula in 1895 - 96; with a list of the species recorded from that region. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1896 (4), 856 - 914, pls. 44 - 46.","Boulenger, G. A. (1912) A Vertebrate Fauna of the Malay Peninsula from the Isthmus of Kra to Singapore, Including the Adjacent Islands. Reptilia and Batrachia, Taylor and Francis, London, xiii + 294 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 10813","de Rooij, N. (1917) The Reptiles of the Indo-Australian Archipelago. II. Ophidia. E. J. Brill, Leiden, xiv + 334 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 10610","de Haas, C. P. J. (1950) Checklist of the snakes of the Indo-Australian Archipelago (Reptiles, Ophidia). Treubia, 20 (3), 511 - 625.","Lim, K. K. P. & Lim, F. L. K. (1992) A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Singapore. Singapore Science Centre, Singapore, 160 pp.","Chou L. M., Ng, P. K. L. & Lim, K. K. P. (1994) Animalia. In: Wee, Y. C. & Ng, P. K. L. (Eds.), A First Look at Biodiversity in Singapore. National Council on the Environment, Singapore, pp. 70 - 106.","Chou, L. M. (1995) Amphibians and reptiles. In: Chin, S. C., Corlett, R. T., Wee, Y. C. & Geh, S. Y. (Eds.), Rain Forest in the City: Bukit Timah Nature Reserve Singapore. Gardens' Bulletin, Singapore, Supplement 3, pp. 145 - 150.","David, P. & Vogel, G. (1996) The Snakes of Sumatra: An Annotated Checklist and Key with Natural History Notes. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt-am-Main, 260 pp.","Manthey, U. & Grossmann, W. (1997) Amphibien und Reptilian Sudostasien. Natur und Tier, M ¸ nster, 512 pp.","Cox, M. J., van Dijk, P. P., Nabhitabhata, J. & Thirakhupt, K. (1998) A Photographic Guide toSnakes and other Reptiles of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. New Holland Publishers, London, 144 pp.","Iskandar, D. T. & Colijn, E. (2001) A Checklist of Southeast Asian and New Guinean Reptiles. Part I. Serpentes. Biodiversity Conservation Project (Indonesian Institute of Sciences - Japan International Cooperation Agency - The Ministry of Forestry). The Gibbon Foundation and Institute of Technology, Bandung, 195 pp.","Lim, K. P. & Lim, F. L. K. (2002) A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Singapore. Revised Edition. Singapore Science Centre, Singapore, 160 pp.","Das, I. (2010) A Field Guide to the Reptiles of Thailand and South-East Asia. New Holland, London, 376 pp.","Grismer, L. L. (2011 a) Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Seribuat Archipelago (Peninsular Malaysia). Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, 239 pp.","Das, I. (2012 a) A Naturalist's Guide to the Snakes of South-East Asia. John Beaufoy Publishing, Oxford, 160 pp.","de Lang, R. (2017) The Snakes of Java, Bali and Surrounding Islands. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, 435 pp.","Das, I. (2018) A Naturalist's Guide to the Snakes of Southeast Asia. 2 nd Edition. John Beaufoy Publishing, Oxford, 176 pp.","Charlton, T. (2020) A Guide to Snakes of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. Natural History Publications (Borneo) Sdn. Bhd., Kota Kinabalu, viii + 299 pp.","Law, I. S., Neo, X., Chan, D. N. & Shivaram, R. (2020) Rediscovery of the Selangor mud snake, Raclitia indica, in Singapore. Singapore Biodiversity Records, 2020, 165 - 167.","Koh, K. H. (2022) Biodiversity Record: Third recent record of white-spotted cat snake in Singapore. Nature in Singapore, 15, e 2022036.","Leviton, A. E., Siler, C. D., Weinell, J. L. & Brown, R. M. (2018) Synopsis of the snakes of the Philippines. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 64 (14), 399 - 568."]}

Boiga cynodon (H. Boie in F. Boie, 1827)— Native. Dipsas cynodon H. Boie in F. Boie, 1827: 549. Holotype: RMNH.RENA.974, by original designation. Type locality: “ Sumatra ”, Indonesia. Dog-toothed Cat Snake (Figure 18A; Hindhede Nature Park) Singapore records. Dipsas cynodon — Dennys, 1880a: 3.— Blanford, 1881: 215. Dipsadomorphus cynodon — Boulenger, 1896: 79.— Flower, 1896: 889.— Flower, 1899: 681.—Ridley, 1899: 209.— Boulenger, 1912: 172.— de Rooij, 1917: 200. Boiga cynodon —Sworder, 1923: 67.—Sworder, 1924ba: 22 (Kranji).— Smith, 1930: 65 (Changi).— de Haas, 1950: 580.—Taylor, 1965: 886, 881.—L.M. Chou et al., 1980: 71.—K. Lim & F. Lim, 1988c: 74 (Singapore Zoo).—F.L.K. Lim & M.T.-M. Lee, 1989: 115.—K.K.P. Lim & L.M. Chou, 1990: 54.—K.K.P. Lim, 1991a: 3 (Old Upper Thomson Road).—K.K.P. Lim & Subharaj, 1992: 7 (Old Upper Thomson Road; Upper Thomson Road).—K.K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 1992: 74, 147.—Wee, 1992: 74 (Lower Peirce Reservoir Park).—K.K.P. Lim, 1993b: 2 (Sime Road Forest).—L.M. Chou et al., 1994: 105.—K.K.P. Lim, 1994b: 217, 331.—J.K.Y. Low et al., 1994: 158.—R. Subaraj et al., 1995: 3 (Sime Forest Pipeline SRF]).—R. Subaraj, 1995: 33, 35 (Pulau Ubin).— David & Vogel, 1996: 64.— Manthey & Grossmann, 1997: 320.—R.C.H. Teo & Rajathurai, 1997: 379 (Jungle Fall & Seraya Valleys [BTNR]; Lower Peirce East Forest [LPF]; Mandai Range Forest; Rifle Range Forest).— Cox et al., 1998: 76.—Chan-ard et al., 1999: 30.— Iskandar & Colijn, 2001: 37.—E.K. Chua, 2002: 13, 107.—K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 2002: 147.— Fry et al., 2003b: 2050.— Lumsden et al., 2004: 821.—N. Baker & K.P. Lim, 2008: 94, 160.—K.K.P. Lim et al., 2008: 264.—T.M. Leong et al., 2009: 487.— Das, 2010: 261.—T.M. Leong & Mishak, 2010: 269–271 (Nangka Carpark [RRNP]).—L.L. Grismer, 2011a: 172.—N. Baker & K.P. Lim, 2012: 95, 160.— Das, 2012a: 22.—M.A.H. Chua, 2014f: 213 (Ulu Sembawang Park Connector).—Wallach et al., 2014: 102.—Chan-ard et al., 2015: 214.—E.K. Chua et al., 2016: 110.—K.K.P. Lim et al., 2016: 181 (Pulau Tekong).— Khew & Yokohari, 2017: 11.— de Lang, 2017: 99.—C. Loh, 2017: 130 (Pasir Ris Heights [PRP]).—Torres-Bonilla et al., 2017: 34.—J. Chua & M.-R. Low, 2018: 38 (Singapore Zoo).— Das, 2018: 29.— Leviton et al., 2018: 429.—R.C.H. Teo & Thomas, 2019: 161, 180 (Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, after R.C.H. Teo & Rajathurai, 1997; Pulau Ubin).— Charlton, 2020: 140– 141.—K.K.P. Lim, 2020: 2, 4 (MacRitchie Forest Reserve [= MR]; Sime Road Internment Camp [= SICC]). Boiga (Dipsadomorphus) cynadon [sic]— Buddle, 1929: 30 (Sembawang Naval Base [= SML]). Boiga cynodon var.—Taylor, 1965: 883. Remarks. Dennys (1880a) first reported B. cynodon from Singapore in a newspaper article based on specimens at the Raffles Museum, and Boulenger (1896) examined three specimens at NHMUK collected by Dennys, Ridley, and Bleeker. No additional records were reported until Sworder (1924) collected one in 1923 at Kranji. For this reason, Sworder (1924) describes B. cynodon as uncommon, but believes it once was common given the number of specimens deposited at the Raffles Museum. Ridley (1899) mentioned that there are B. cynodon specimens at LKCNHM, but did not specify how many. Subsequently, Buddle (1929) collected four specimens from SNB, and Smith (1930) noted a specimen collected in Changi that he recognised as aberrant. These historic records indicate that B. cynodon occupied a wide range throughout Singapore. Aside from sightings at PU (Subaraj 1995) and PT (Lim et al. 2016), most records have been made around CNR (e.g., Lim 1991a; Subaraj et al. 1995; Teo & Rajathurai 1997), and Singapore Zoo (Lim & Lim 1988c; Chua & Low 2018), including an olive-coloured morph photographed at Mandai Track 15 on 12 February 2011 (J. Koh pers. comm.). However, one individual was seen moving along a sidewalk at Pasir Ris Heights (Loh 2017), suggesting B. cynodon may still be found in forests outside of CNR. These forest patches stand as young, degraded secondary forest which are less than ideal for such a large, arboreal species; yet, on PU, where B. cynodon is found more commonly, the forest is also young and disturbed. Occurrence. Wide-ranging. Uncommon. More common on Pulau Ubin. Singapore conservation status. Vulnerable. Conservation priority. Moderate. IUCN conservation status. Least Concern [2012]. LKCNHM & NHMUK Museum specimens. Singapore (no locality): BMNH 1880.9.10.9 (no date), BMNH 1882.11.27.4 (no date), BMNH 1895.1.8.9 (no date), BMNH 1930.12.2.7 (no date), ZRC.2.4460 (no date), ZRC.2.4441 (1905), ZRC.2.4442 (Jul-1937); Botanic Gardens: ZRC.2.4480 (no date), ZRC.2.4466 (13- Oct-1899), ZRC.2.4477 (11-Sep-1899), ZRC.2.4459 (Nov-1902), ZRC.2.4474 (28-Oct-1907), ZRC.2.4461 (29-Apr-1908); Bukit Timah: ZRC.2.4436 (26-Nov-1978); Changi: BMNH 1930.10.9.3 (no date); Greenbank Park : ZRC.2.5389 (Dec-2001); Hindhede Drive: ZRC.2.4149 (5-Nov-1979); Island Club Road [SICC]: ZRC.2.6866 (22-Feb-2010); Kranji: ZRC.2.4455 (17-May-1923); Mandai Lake Road: ZRC.2.6828 (19-Jun-2009); Old Upper Thomson Road: ZRC.2.3267 (30-Mar-1991), ZRC.2.3472 (29- Mar-1992); Rifle Range Road [RRNP]: ZRC.2.6872 (09-Mar-2010); Singapore Zoo: ZRC.2.5445 (06- Dec-2001). Additional Singapore museum specimens. Singapore (no locality): AMNH, CAS, NMI, NMW, WAM. Bukit Timah : CAS; Eng Neo Avenue Forest: BPBM; Island Club Road [SICC]: UWBM. Singapore localities. Bukit Timah (not specified)—Bukit Timah Nature Reserve—Changi—Eng Neo Avenue Forest—Greenbank Park—Hindhede Drive—Hindhede Nature Park—Kranji—Lower Peirce Forest—Lower Peirce Reservoir Park—MacRitchie Reservoir—Mandai Lake Road—Mandai Range Forest—Mandai Track 15—Old Upper Thomson Road—Pasir Ris Park—Pulau Tekong—Pulau Ubin—Rifle Range Forest—Rifle Range Nature Park—Sembcorp Marine Ltd.*—Sime Road Forest—Singapore Botanic Gardens—Singapore Island Country Club—Singapore Zoo—Ulu Sembawang Forest—Upper Thomson Road., Published as part of Figueroa, Alex, Low, Martyn E. Y. & Lim, Kelvin K. P., 2023, Singapore's herpetofauna: updated and annotated checklist, history, conservation, and distribution, pp. 1-378 in Zootaxa 5287 (1) on pages 154-155, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5287.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7960319, {"references":["Dennys, N. B. (1880 a) The snakes of Singapore I. Singapore Daily Times, 20 December 1880, 2 - 3.","Blanford, W. T. (1881) On a collection of reptiles and frogs chiefly from Singapore. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1881 (1), 215 - 226, pls. 20 - 21. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 101596","Boulenger, G. A. (1896) Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum (Natural History). Vol. III. Containing the Colubridae (Opisthoglyphae and Proteroglyphae), Amblycephalidae and Viperidae. British Museum (Natural History), London, xiv + 727 pp., 25 pls.","Flower, S. S. (1896) Notes on a collection of reptiles and batrachians made in the Malay Peninsula in 1895 - 96; with a list of the species recorded from that region. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1896 (4), 856 - 914, pls. 44 - 46.","Flower, S. S. (1899 b) Notes on a second collection of reptiles made in the Malay Peninsula and Siam, from November 1896 - September 1898, with a list of the species recorded from those countries. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1899 (4), 600 - 696, pls. 36 - 37.","Boulenger, G. A. (1912) A Vertebrate Fauna of the Malay Peninsula from the Isthmus of Kra to Singapore, Including the Adjacent Islands. Reptilia and Batrachia, Taylor and Francis, London, xiii + 294 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 10813","de Rooij, N. (1917) The Reptiles of the Indo-Australian Archipelago. II. Ophidia. E. J. Brill, Leiden, xiv + 334 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 10610","de Haas, C. P. J. (1950) Checklist of the snakes of the Indo-Australian Archipelago (Reptiles, Ophidia). Treubia, 20 (3), 511 - 625.","Chou L. M., Ho, S. H., Khoo, H. W., Lam, T. J., Murphy, D. H. & Tan, W. H. (1980) The Present State of Mangrove Ecosystems in Southeast Asia and the Impact of Pollution - Singapore. South China Sea Fisheries Development and Coordinating Programme, Manila. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and United Nations Environment Programme, SCS / 80 / WP / 94 d (Rev.), pp. i - vi + 1 - 76.","Lim, K. & Lim, F. (1988 c) Reptiles. The Pangolin, 1 (4), 74 - 77.","Lim, K. K. P. (1991 a) Reptiles & Amphibians. The Pangolin, 4 (1), 3 - 4.","Lim, K. K. P. & Subharaj, R. (1992) Reptiles & Amphibians. The Pangolin, 5 (1 - 4), 5 - 9.","Lim, K. K. P. & Lim, F. L. K. (1992) A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Singapore. Singapore Science Centre, Singapore, 160 pp.","Lim, K. K. P. (1993 b) Reptiles & Amphibians. The Pangolin, 6 (3 - 4), 1 - 4.","Chou L. M., Ng, P. K. L. & Lim, K. K. P. (1994) Animalia. In: Wee, Y. C. & Ng, P. K. L. (Eds.), A First Look at Biodiversity in Singapore. National Council on the Environment, Singapore, pp. 70 - 106.","Lim, K. K. P. (1994 b) Reptiles. In: Ng, P. K. L. & Wee, Y. C. (Eds.), The Singapore Red Data Book: Threatened Plants and Animals of Singapore. Nature Society, Singapore, pp. 213 - 227.","Low, J. K. Y., Arshad, A. & Lim, K. H. (1994) Mangroves as a habitat for endangered species and biodiversity conservation. In: Wilkinson, C., Sudara, S. & Ming, C. L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Third ASEAN-Australia Symposium on Living Coastal Resources: Status Reviews. Vol. 1. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, 16 - 20 May 1994. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, pp. 157 - 169.","David, P. & Vogel, G. (1996) The Snakes of Sumatra: An Annotated Checklist and Key with Natural History Notes. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt-am-Main, 260 pp.","Manthey, U. & Grossmann, W. (1997) Amphibien und Reptilian Sudostasien. Natur und Tier, M ¸ nster, 512 pp.","Cox, M. J., van Dijk, P. P., Nabhitabhata, J. & Thirakhupt, K. (1998) A Photographic Guide toSnakes and other Reptiles of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. New Holland Publishers, London, 144 pp.","Iskandar, D. T. & Colijn, E. (2001) A Checklist of Southeast Asian and New Guinean Reptiles. Part I. Serpentes. Biodiversity Conservation Project (Indonesian Institute of Sciences - Japan International Cooperation Agency - The Ministry of Forestry). The Gibbon Foundation and Institute of Technology, Bandung, 195 pp.","Chua, E. K. (2002) Chek Jawa: Discovering Singapore's Biodiversity. Simply Green, Singapore, 116 pp.","Lim, K. P. & Lim, F. L. K. (2002) A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Singapore. Revised Edition. Singapore Science Centre, Singapore, 160 pp.","Fry, B. G., W ¸ ster, W., Ramjan, S. F. R., Jackson, T., Martelli, P. & Kini, R. M. (2003 b) Analysis of Colubroidea snake venoms by liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry: evolutionary and toxinological implications. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 17 (18), 2047 - 2062. https: // doi. org / 10.1002 / rcm. 1148","Lumsden, N. G., Fry, B. G., Kini, R. M. & Hodgson, W. C. (2004) In vitro neuromuscular activity of ' colubrid'venoms: clinical and evolutionary implications. Toxicon, 43 (7), 819 - 827. https: // doi. org / 10.1016 / j. toxicon. 2004.03.012","Das, I. (2010) A Field Guide to the Reptiles of Thailand and South-East Asia. New Holland, London, 376 pp.","Leong, T. M. & Mishak, S. (2010) Attempted predation on a dog-toothed cat snake, Boiga cynodon by a black spitting cobra, Naja sumatrana in Singapore (Reptilia: Squamata). Nature in Singapore, 3, 269 - 271.","Grismer, L. L. (2011 a) Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Seribuat Archipelago (Peninsular Malaysia). Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, 239 pp.","Das, I. (2012 a) A Naturalist's Guide to the Snakes of South-East Asia. John Beaufoy Publishing, Oxford, 160 pp.","Chua, M. A. H. (2014 f) Dog-toothed cat snake at Ulu Sembawang. Singapore Biodiversity Records, 2014, 213.","Lim, K. K. P., Chua, M. A. H. & Lim, N. T. - L. (2016) Freshwater fishes, terrestrial herpetofauna and mammals of Pulau Tekong, Singapore. Nature in Singapore, 9, 165 - 198.","Khew, Y. T. J. & Yokohari, M. (2017) Recommendations for urban biodiversity conservation in the context of landscape preference in Singapore. Cities and the Environment (CATE), 10 (1), 1 - 21.","de Lang, R. (2017) The Snakes of Java, Bali and Surrounding Islands. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, 435 pp.","Loh, C. (2017) Dog-toothed cat snake at Pasir Ris. Singapore Biodiversity Records, 2017, 130.","Das, I. (2018) A Naturalist's Guide to the Snakes of Southeast Asia. 2 nd Edition. John Beaufoy Publishing, Oxford, 176 pp.","Leviton, A. E., Siler, C. D., Weinell, J. L. & Brown, R. M. (2018) Synopsis of the snakes of the Philippines. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 64 (14), 399 - 568.","Charlton, T. (2020) A Guide to Snakes of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. Natural History Publications (Borneo) Sdn. Bhd., Kota Kinabalu, viii + 299 pp.","Lim K. K. P. (2020) Snakes and lizards recorded by Alexander Cross in Singapore from 1942 to 1945. Singapore Biodiversity Records, 2020 (Spec. No.), 1 - 6.","Buddle, R. (1929) Snakes of Singapore Island. Kelly & Walsh, Limited, Singapore, 48 pp.","Chua, J. & Low, M. - R. (2018) Melanistic dog-toothed cat snake at Mandai. Singapore Biodiversity Records, 2018, 38 - 39."]}

Boiga jaspidea (Duméril, Bibron & Duméril, 1854) — Native. Triglyphodon jaspideum A.M.C. Duméril, Bibron & A. Duméril, 1854: 1093–1097. Holotype: MNHN-RA 7627, by original designation. Type locality: “à Java ”, Indonesia. Jasper Cat Snake (Figure 18C) Singapore records. Dipsadomorphus jaspideus — Boulenger, 1912: 170.— de Rooij, 1917: 199. Boiga jaspidea —Sworder, 1923: 66.— de Haas, 1950: 583.—Tweedie, 1950: 197.—Tweedie, 1953: 76.— Tweedie, 1961: 78.— Harman, 1961: 183.—Taylor, 1965: 878.—Tweedie, 1983: 77.—F.L.K. Lim & M.T.-M. Lee, 1989: 79, 116 (Singapore Zoo).—K.K.P. Lim & L.M. Chou, 1990: 54.—K.K.P. Lim & Subharaj, 1992: 7 (Lower Peirce Forest).—K.K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 1992: 74, 147 (Mandai).—Wee, 1992: 74 (Lower Peirce Reservoir Park).—L.M. Chou et al., 1994: 105.—K.K.P. Lim, 1994b: 331.— David & Vogel, 1996: 68.— Manthey & Grossmann, 1997: 322.—R.C.H. Teo & Rajathurai, 1997: 379 (Lower Peirce East Forest [LPF]; Nee Soon Range [NSSF]).— Cox et al., 1998: 77.— Das, 1998: 65.—Chan-ard et al., 1999: 30.— Iskandar & Colijn, 2001: 39.—K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 2002: 147.—N. Baker & K.P. Lim, 2008: 95, 160.—K.K.P. Lim et al., 2008: 162, 264.—T.M. Leong et al., 2009: 487.— Das, 2010: 262.—Ziegler et al., 2010: 268.—N. Baker & K.P. Lim, 2012: 95, 160.— Das, 2012a: 23.—Stuebing et al., 2014: 146.—Thomas, 2014: 68, 69 (Upper Seletar).—Wallach et al., 2014: 105.—Chan-ard et al., 2015: 213.—I.S. Law, I.T. Law & Groenewoud, 2016: 145 (“access road to Upper Peirce Reservoir Park” [UPRR]).—Thomas et al., 2016: 1.—K.K.P. Lim et al., 2016: 181 (Pulau Tekong).— de Lang, 2017: 110.— Das, 2018: 30.— Charlton, 2020: 145.—I.S. Law et al., 2021: 1 (Upper Seletar). Dipsas jaspidea —Tweedie, 1951: 197. Remarks. The first report of B. jaspidea from Singapore comes from Boulenger (1912) who incorrectly cited M̧ller (1882) as recording one. Instead, M̧ller’s (1882) record lists Penang as the locality. Sworder (1923) followed Boulenger (1912) and also incorrectly cited M̧ller (1882); however, Sworder (1923) also referenced a specimen deposited at the Raffles Museum, likely collected by Ridley in 1908 (Tweedie 1950). Following this specimen, B. drapiezii went unrecorded for 53 years (Table 2) until Harman (1961). The next record was from Lim & Lee (1989) who discussed one caught at Singapore Zoo that contained three bird eggshells in its stomach. Additional records of B. drapiezii include one photographed at LPF on 7 March 1992 (Lim & Subharaj 1992), one from US (Teo & Rajathurai 1997), a dead specimen at US on 13 March 2013 (Thomas 2014), four records from PT (Fig. 18C) (Lim et al. 2016), another roadkill on OUTR on 27 August 2016 (Law et al. 2016), and two separate observations from US on 8 August 2020 and 20 May 2021 (Law et al. 2021). The LKCNHM also has two other specimens, one from SBG with no date and one from Mandai Lake Road collected on 1 December 1986. Occurrence. Known from a few observations from CCNR and surrounding Nature Parks and forests, and PT. Rare. Singapore conservation status. Critically Endangered. Conservation priority. Highest. IUCN conservation status. Least Concern [2012]. LKCNHM & NHMUK Museum specimens. Botanic Gardens: ZRC.2.4200 (no date); Mandai Lake Road : ZRC.2.2298 (01-Dec-1986); Mandai Track 7: ZRC.2.7020 (13-Mar-2013); Upper Peirce Reservoir Road: ZRC.2.7225 (27-Aug-2016). Additional Singapore museum specimens. No specimens. Singapore localities. Lower Peirce Forest—Lower Peirce Reservoir Park—Mandai (not specified)—Mandai Lake Road—Mandai Track 7—Nee Soon Swamp Forest—Pulau Tekong—Singapore Botanic Gardens*— Singapore Zoo—Upper Peirce Reservoir Road—Upper Seletar Reservoir Park., Published as part of Figueroa, Alex, Low, Martyn E. Y. & Lim, Kelvin K. P., 2023, Singapore's herpetofauna: updated and annotated checklist, history, conservation, and distribution, pp. 1-378 in Zootaxa 5287 (1) on pages 156-157, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5287.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7960319, {"references":["Boulenger, G. A. (1912) A Vertebrate Fauna of the Malay Peninsula from the Isthmus of Kra to Singapore, Including the Adjacent Islands. Reptilia and Batrachia, Taylor and Francis, London, xiii + 294 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 10813","de Rooij, N. (1917) The Reptiles of the Indo-Australian Archipelago. II. Ophidia. E. J. Brill, Leiden, xiv + 334 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 10610","de Haas, C. P. J. (1950) Checklist of the snakes of the Indo-Australian Archipelago (Reptiles, Ophidia). Treubia, 20 (3), 511 - 625.","Harman, A. J. E. (1961) A collection of snakes from Singapore. Malayan Nature Journal, 15 (3 - 4), 181 - 183.","Lim, K. K. P. & Subharaj, R. (1992) Reptiles & Amphibians. The Pangolin, 5 (1 - 4), 5 - 9.","Lim, K. K. P. & Lim, F. L. K. (1992) A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Singapore. Singapore Science Centre, Singapore, 160 pp.","Chou L. M., Ng, P. K. L. & Lim, K. K. P. (1994) Animalia. In: Wee, Y. C. & Ng, P. K. L. (Eds.), A First Look at Biodiversity in Singapore. National Council on the Environment, Singapore, pp. 70 - 106.","Lim, K. K. P. (1994 b) Reptiles. In: Ng, P. K. L. & Wee, Y. C. (Eds.), The Singapore Red Data Book: Threatened Plants and Animals of Singapore. Nature Society, Singapore, pp. 213 - 227.","David, P. & Vogel, G. (1996) The Snakes of Sumatra: An Annotated Checklist and Key with Natural History Notes. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt-am-Main, 260 pp.","Manthey, U. & Grossmann, W. (1997) Amphibien und Reptilian Sudostasien. Natur und Tier, M ¸ nster, 512 pp.","Cox, M. J., van Dijk, P. P., Nabhitabhata, J. & Thirakhupt, K. (1998) A Photographic Guide toSnakes and other Reptiles of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. New Holland Publishers, London, 144 pp.","Das, I. (1998) A new species of Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the Nicobar Archipelago. Journal of South Asian Natural History, 3 (1), 59 - 67.","Iskandar, D. T. & Colijn, E. (2001) A Checklist of Southeast Asian and New Guinean Reptiles. Part I. Serpentes. Biodiversity Conservation Project (Indonesian Institute of Sciences - Japan International Cooperation Agency - The Ministry of Forestry). The Gibbon Foundation and Institute of Technology, Bandung, 195 pp.","Lim, K. P. & Lim, F. L. K. (2002) A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Singapore. Revised Edition. Singapore Science Centre, Singapore, 160 pp.","Das, I. (2010) A Field Guide to the Reptiles of Thailand and South-East Asia. New Holland, London, 376 pp.","Das, I. (2012 a) A Naturalist's Guide to the Snakes of South-East Asia. John Beaufoy Publishing, Oxford, 160 pp.","Lim, K. K. P., Chua, M. A. H. & Lim, N. T. - L. (2016) Freshwater fishes, terrestrial herpetofauna and mammals of Pulau Tekong, Singapore. Nature in Singapore, 9, 165 - 198.","de Lang, R. (2017) The Snakes of Java, Bali and Surrounding Islands. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, 435 pp.","Das, I. (2018) A Naturalist's Guide to the Snakes of Southeast Asia. 2 nd Edition. John Beaufoy Publishing, Oxford, 176 pp.","Charlton, T. (2020) A Guide to Snakes of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. Natural History Publications (Borneo) Sdn. Bhd., Kota Kinabalu, viii + 299 pp.","Law, I. S., Tan, R., Sim, R. S. I. & Toh, W. Y. (2021) Biodiversity Record: Jasper cat snake at Upper Seletar. Nature in Singapore, 14 (e 2021066), 1 - 2."]}

Boiga multomaculata septentrionalis ssp. nov. Northern Polymorphic Asian Cat Snake urn:lsid:zoobank.org: act: 439A42EE-0B42-4063-B04A-E18B14FA6023 1931 Boiga multomaculata indica Mell: 213 [partim]. 1943 Boiga ochracea walli Smith: 349 [partim]. Geographic Distribution. As currently known, B. m. septentrionalis is distributed in northern Myanmar (Kachin state and Sagaing Region) and NE India (Assam and Nagaland), but is probably more widespread and based on the documented pattern of geographic distribution we have referred an adult male specimen from southern China (CAS 242550 from Yunnan Province) tentatively to this subspecies, pending genetic confirmation. Holotype. CAS 241272, an adult male from Indawgyi Lake Wildlife Sanctuary (25.30347, 96.35417; 235 m a.s.l.), vicinity Kyang Kyar village, Moenyin Township, Myitkyina District, Kachin State, Myanmar, collected on 20 July 2008 by J.A. Wilkinson, J. V. Vindum, S.L. Oo, K. T. Kyaw, and M. Win. Original field tag MHS 25921. Paratypes (3). CAS 241150, an adult female from Indawgyi Lake Wildlife Sanctuary (25.30347, 96.35417; 235 m a.s.l.), E of Nat Mouk Kan village, Moenyin Township, Myitkyina District, Kachin State, Myanmar, collected on 14 July 2008 by G.O.U. Wogan, J.A. Wilkinson, J. V. Vindum, A.K. Shein. CAS 241550, an adult female from Indawgyi Lake Wildlife Sanctuary (25.17869, 96.29156; 270 m a.s.l.), vicinity of Lwe Mon village, Moenyin Township, Myitkyina District, Kachin State, Myanmar, collected on 26 July 2008 by J.A. Wilkinson, K. T. Kyaw, and J. V. Vindum. SMF 106288 (formerly CAS 239222), an adult male from Linpha village (25,80489, 95,52667; 140 m a.s.l.), Hkanti Township, Hkanti District, Sagaing Region, Myanmar, collected on 10 September 2006 by K.S. Lwin, S.L. Oo, and A.K. Shein. Diagnosis. A subspecies of Boiga multomaculata that differs from the other two subspecies (i.e., B. m. multomaculata and B. m. ochracea) by mean pairwise genetic distances of 3.3–5.8% (ND4) and 3.7–6.5% (CYTB), respectively. It further differs from B. m. multomaculata by having on average more ventral scales in both sexes (males 227.7±5.19, females 228.8± 1.71 in B. m. septentrionalis versus males 214.4±8.06, females 217.1± 9.50 in B. m. multomaculata), by having on average more subcaudal scales in both sexes (males 99.1±5.82, females 97.3± 2.06 in B. m. septentrionalis versus males 94.5±5.33, females 89.8± 4.13 in B. m. multomaculata), and by having both blotched and patternless individuals (versus only blotched specimens in Boiga m. multomaculata). It further differs from B. m. ochracea by having on average fewer ventral scales in females (228.8± 1.71 in B. m. septentrionalis versus 238.9± 6.30 in B. m. ochracea). Description of the holotype (Figs. 14 and 15). Adult male, indicated by fully developed everted hemipenes; 1/1 loreal, wider than high; nasal scale partly divided below the naris; 1/1 preocular; 1/1 supraocular; 2/2 postoculars; 2 prefrontals; 2/2 anterior and 3/2 posterior temporals; supralabials 8/8, 3 rd –5 th supralabials entering eye; 11/11 infralabials, first five in contact with anterior chin shields; dorsal scales in 19-19-15 rows, smooth with single or paired apical pits on body and single to triple apical pits on dorsocaudal scales; vertebral scale row distinctly enlarged; two preventrals and 226 ventrals; cloacal plate entire; subcaudal scales 92, paired. Body slender; tail long (TL/SVL 0.235); SVL 578 mm; TL 136 mm; head length measured from tip of snout to posterior edge of mandible 18.1 mm, head width 10.5 mm; diameter eye 3.4 mm; distance anterior border eye to tip of snout 4.9 mm. Dentition. Maxillary bone with 11/11 prediastemal teeth, followed by a distinct diastema which is 40% longer than the socket of the last prediastemal tooth and followed by two distinctly enlarged, grooved and posteriorly bent postdiastemal teeth. Prediastemal teeth slightly decrease in size posteriorly, the anterior three distinctly posteriorly hooked, the following with less pronounced curvature. On the left side, prediastemal teeth number two, four, six, eight and ten, and first postdiastemal loose. On the right side, prediastemal teeth one, three, five, seven and nine, and first postdiastemal tooth loose. Medial to each maxillary tooth is a single replacement tooth at different growth stages. Palatine bone with 6/6 posteriorly strongly curved teeth, shorter that the prediastemal teeth and slightly decreasing in size posteriorly. Tooth three six loose on left side. Teeth two, four and six loose on the right side. Lateral to each palatine tooth is a single replacement tooth at different growth stages. Pterygoid bone with 11/12 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter than the palatine tooth, gradually decreasing in size posteriorly. Teeth two, five, seven and 10 loose on left side. Teeth one, three, five, 10 and 12 loose on right side. The posterior 63% of the pterygoid bone are without teeth. Mandibular bone with 18/17 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter than maxillary teeth, gradually decreasing in size posteriorly. Medial to each mandibular tooth is a single replacement tooth in different growth stages. Teeth one, three, five, seven, nine, 11, 13 and 15 loose on left and right side. Tooth 17 missing on right side. Coloration after about 13 years preservation in 70% ethanol was recorded as follows: Dorsal ground color Smoke Gray (Color 266) with Natal Brown (49) mottling on scales and with 62 Sepia (286) blotches that have a paler (Grayish Olive 274 suffused with Smoke Gray 266) center and a white to Pale Buff (1) border. Dorsal scale reduction formula. [table omitted] Variation. Paratypes agree well with the holotype in general appearance, morphometrics and scalation (Table 1). Most paratypes are blotched as is the holotype. An exception is SMF 106288 (formerly CAS 239222) that has no blotches but exhibits 58 indistinct transverse dark bars composed of dark edges of adjacent dorsal scales. Variation in dentition. Ten to 12 prediastemal teeth followed by a distinct diastema and two enlarged grooved postdiastemal teeth; five to six palatine, seven to 12 pterygoid, and 16 to 19 dental teeth. Variation in live coloration and pattern. Two color morphs, blotched and unicolored are known. The blotched morph resembles the color and pattern of brownish individuals of the nominate subspecies. The unicolored morph (Fig. 16) resembles the unpatterned morph of B. m. ochracea. An intermediate color variation is known from Nagaland, NE India (WII-AD 856), which resembles the ground coloration of the unicolored morph but shows a Raw Umber (280) postocular stripe, faint dark dorsal had pattern similar to that of the nominate subspecies and an irregular strippled Raw Umber (280) pattern forming broken bands along dorsal body and tail. Etymology. The species epithet is formed from the Latin words septentrio (= “north”) and the suffix - alis (to form an adjective) and refers to the geographic distribution of this taxon. Boiga m. septentrionalis has the most northern distribution of the subspecies of B. multomaculata. Natural History. The holotype of B. m. septentrionalis was collected at 19:30 hrs. in bamboo, about 2 m above ground. The paratypes were all collected at night when Boiga is active. At the time of capture, the air temperature was 26.1–28.2°C and the relative air humidity was recorded as 81–96%.

Boiga multomaculata Dipsas multomaculata was described by Heinrich Boie’s elder brother Friedrich (1789–1870), in Latin and German (Boie 1827), and published in the year of Heinrich’s death. It has been suggested that Friedrich Boie attributed his description to H. Boie’s (1823 –1825) “Erpétologie de Java ” (Wallach et al. 2014). The latter work was never published and names proposed therein are considered unavailable for the purposes of nomenclature, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN 1999; ICZN 2012), hereafter referred to as “the Code”. However, F. Boie does not actually cite his brother’s unpublished work in his D. multomaculata species account. Rather he cites the Prussian-born Dutch pharmacist and botanist Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (1773–1854), yet no Reinwardt 1825 paper describing this taxon exists and it must be assumed that F. Boie was the person who introduced this binomen. Since Boie does attribute the taxon name to Reinwardt the degree of his involvement must therefore be determined. If Reinwardt just contributed the name with the specimen the citation would be Dipsas multomaculata F. Boie, 1827, but if he contributed both the name and a description of sorts, then the citation should be Dipsas multomaculata Reinwardt in F. Boie, 1827 (Aaron Bauer, pers. comm.). It would appear that the first scenario is correct (see also David & Vogel 1996:21). Thus, the author citation is F. Boie, 1827 not Reinwardt in F. Boie, 1827 because F. Boie attributes the name to Reinwardt but not the description. Schlegel (1826:238) also attributes the description of Dipsas multomaculata to Reinwardt when he writes „Gen. DIPSAS Laur. Cuo, Esp. …… Col. multimaculatus (sic) Reinw. N. esp. …” There is nothing in F. Boie’s account to suggest he referred to his brother’s unpublished manuscript for his description of D. multomaculata. However, the comparison of H. Boie´s manuscript part for “ Dipsas multimaculata ” and Friedrich Boie’s (1827) text on “[Dipsas] multomaculata ”, which we regard as the original description, shows, that the latter is a verbatim copy of H. Boie´s manuscript with the exception of the different spelling of the species name and the reference to images which depict this species in earlier classical works. The primary types of this taxon have been stated to be unlocated (Nguyen et al. 2009; Uetz et al. 2019), as deposited in “RMNH” (Iskandar & Colijn 2002) or listed with incorrect quantity, syntype composition, and collectors (Wallach et al. 2014). They are actually present in the collection of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center (formerly Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Histoire, Leiden, Netherlands) and have been examined by one of the authors (FT). The enquiries in Leiden by FT and MOS revealed that H. Boie wrote his manuscript between 1823 and 1825, i.e., before his departure for Java. However, this also means that the material he and Macklot collected on Java between June 1826 and September 1827 (= RMNH 978a+b) was not available to him when he wrote his manuscript. Thus, material used for the description must have already been in the Leiden collection. Therefore, only material that was previously collected by Kuhl and van Hasselt or Reinwardt would have been available to him and are very likely the specimens listed under RMNH 979. The material collected by H. Boie and Macklot (RMNH 978a+b) could never have been part of the type series of D. multomaculata because F. Boie (1827) added nothing new to his brother’s text. It has to be noted that the order of the inventory numbers does not relate to the order of accession into the Leiden collection. A specimen (i.e., ZMB 2642) in the collection of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin very likely also belonged to the original type series of D. multomaculata. According to a letter dated “Leyden, 2 nd April 1825 ” (preserved in the Dept. of Historical Research of Berlin Museum, Acta Sign. ZM, Dr. Temminck, Leyden, 1818), Heinrich Boie wrote to Martin Hinrich Carl Lichtenstein (1780–1857, Director of the ZMB at that time) and offered him beside many other specimens from Java under list number “38” a specimen of “ Dipsas multimaculata ” for the price of 1 [Reichsthaler]. The same specimen appeared with the same number and same price in a list written by Lichtenstein documenting the arrival of the objects with the following title [translation by us]: „List of the objects sent by Mr. Temminck from Leyden and arrived at the Museum [Berlin] on 9 March 1826 “. These hitherto unnoticed documents suggest that the specimen of D. multomaculata offered by H. Boie to the Berlin Museum in April 1825 must have belonged to the original type series and was probably collected by Kuhl and Van Hasselt and available to H. Boie when he worked on his manuscript. In addition, the scalation values of ZMB 2642 are within the variation given by H. Boie in his manuscript. The main reason why this specimen has not been considered as a type specimen so far is probably the fact that it is linked only to Coenraad Jacob Temminck (director of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden and treasurer of the Dutch East India Company) who is cited as the donor in the Berlin Museum inventory catalogue and no one had previously evaluated the associated correspondence. Only RMNH 979 (a jar which contains six specimens) and the specimen later sent to the Zoologisches Museum Berlin were available for H. Boie’s manuscript. Of the six specimens under RMNH 979 only specimen b, d, e and f (all females) fit the scalation data of H. Boie (manuscript) and F. Boie (1827). Thus, in our opinion, the extant syntype series of D. multomaculata F. Boie 1827 consists of ZMB 2642 and four out of the six specimens listed under RMNH 979. The German naturalists Heinrich Boie (1794–1827) and Heinrich Christian Macklot (1799–1832) visited Java between December 1825 and September 1827. Esther Dondorp (Senior Collection Manager) and Karien Lahaise (Naturalis archivist) informed MOS that according to an unpublished manuscript by Marinus Hoogmoed “ H. Boie and Macklot arrived in Java on 6 June 1826. On December 28, 1826 they travelled to Krawang (Tjikao) [now Karawang, a town in West Java regency, Tjikao, now Ci Kao, is a watercourse south of Karawang]. H. Boie died on 4 September 1827 ”. Thus, the dates that both were working in Java together and collected these specimens may therefore be defined more accurately as 6 June 1826 to 4 September 1827. The two were in the employ of the Rijksmuseum voor Natuurlijke Historie (RMNH), as part of the Natuurkundige Commissie voor Nederlandsche Indie (Commission for Natural Sciences of the East Indies). In all documents (letters and manuscript) from H. Boie’s hand and publications based on H. Boie’s manuscript or written notifications by him (e.g., Schlegel 1826 and 1827) the spelling “ multimaculata ” is used exclusively. This also applies to the Leiden catalogue entries. Although this is to be taken as a clear expression of his will, we have to accept Friedrich Boie´s (1827) “ multomaculata ”, since the latter is responsible for the valid introduction of the name in the sense of the Code, Art. 50.1. This is also in line with the statements of David & Vogel (1996:21). Numerous authors erroneously referred to this species as Dipsas multimaculatus or D. multimaculata (e.g., Duméril et al. 1854b; Duméril et al. 1854a; Theobald 1868b; Boulenger 1890), and this misspelling of multomaculata as multimaculatus would continue when Boulenger (1896) placed the rear-fanged Asian cat snakes into the resurrected Dipsadomorphus, and even when they were transferred to Boiga by Smith (1923). In recent years most authors have been careful to use F. Boie’s correct spelling Boiga multomaculata. A number of obscure names have been proposed as synonyms of B. multomaculata. Wallach et al. (2014) suggested Coluber aldrovandi Merrem, 1820, to be a synonym of this taxon. However, reading Merrem´s description (1820:125) it becomes obvious that it is not even a Boiga because some of the main characters noted by Merrem, e.g., keeled scales, head pointedly rounded, and the absence of a loreal scale are not characteristic for this genus. Also the values for ventrals (121) and subcaudals (49) of Merrem´s aldrovandi are far outside the range of B. multomaculata (see Table 1). Their action to declare Dipsas multomaculata a nomen protectum with priority over “ Coluber aldrovandi ” is therefore obsolete. Furthermore, Merrem´s taxon was not described in the combination with the genus name Coluber but with „ Natrix “. The name “ Natrix sturmii ” is based on an unpublished manuscript dated around 1825 by Johann Georg Wagler (1800–1832) (pers. comm. Van Wallach 17 March 2022) and is considered nomen ineditum because it was not been properly published according to the Code. Rudolf Emil Mell (1878–1970) was a German school-teacher and amateur naturalist collector working in China in the early 20 th Century. He returned to Germany in May 1921 and later proposed several subspecies of B. multomaculatus (Mell 1931), i.e., B. m. hainanensis, B. m. indica, and B. m. sikiangensis but these taxa have been considered synonyms of B. multomaculata since their inception (e.g., Pope 1935; Bourret 1936; Smith 1943). Whereas the syntypes of B. m. sikiangensis are known (i.e. ZMB 49427, 50879, 52642), no type material is known to exist for B. m. hainanensis or B. m. indica. The type localities of B. m. hainanensis (“Hainan”) and B. m. sikiangensis (“Kwangtung (Hongkong)”) are more precise than the one given for B. m. indica (“continental India ”), especially since continental India at that time included Sikkim, Assam, Bengal (including today’s Bangladesh), Burma (Myanmar), and Pakistan. The various author’s copies of this publication that Mell distributed, including the one in the departmental herpetological library at Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut, contain a handwritten correction of B. m. hainanensis to “ sikiangensis Mell”. Presumably, the author had a change of mind regarding his taxon name, but this has no nomenclatorial relevance. As far as we know, Mell never corrected it formally in a subsequent publication and the introduction of the name hainanensis must be regarded as valid published in the sense of the Code. At the time of writing Mell’s subspecies were not listed in the Reptile Database (Uetz et al. 2022)., Published as part of Köhler, Gunther, Charunrochana, Panupong Thammachoti, Mogk, Linda, Than, Ni Lar, Kurniawan, Nia, Kadafi, Ahmad Muammar, Das, Abhijit, Tillack, Frank & O'Shea, Mark, 2023, A taxonomic revision of Boiga multomaculata (Boie, 1827) and B. ochracea (Theobald, 1868), with the description of a new subspecies (Squamata, Serpentes, Colubridae), pp. 151-193 in Zootaxa 5270 (2) on pages 152-154, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5270.2.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7896950, {"references":["Boie, F. (1827) Bemerkungen uber Merrem's Versuch eines Systems der Amphibien. Marburg, 1820 1 te Lieferung, Ophidier. Isis von Oken, Jena, 20, 508 - 566.","Boie, H. (1823 - 1825) Erpetologie de Java. (unpublished manuscript deposited in Naturalis, Leiden, the Netherlands, snake section contains 30 pages).","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: a Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, xxvii + 1237.","ICZN (1999) International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Available from http: // www. nhm. ac. uk / hosted-sites / iczn / code.","ICZN (2012) Amendment of Articles 8, 9, 10, 21 and 78 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature to expand and refine methods of publication. ZooKeys, 219, 1 - 10. https: // doi. org / 10.3897 / zookeys. 219.3994","David, P. & Vogel, G. (1996) The Snakes of Sumatra: An Annotated Checklist and Key with Natural History Notes. Eidtion Chimaira, Frankfurt, 259 pp.","Schlegel, H. (1826) Notice sur l'erpetologie de I'ile de Java; par M Boie (ouvrage manuscrit). Bulletin des Sciences Naturelles et de Geologie, 9, 233 - 240.","Nguyen, V. S., Ho, T. C. & Nguyen, Q. T. (2009) Herpetofauna of Vietnam. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt, 768 pp.","Uetz, P., Cherikh, S., Shea, G., Ineich, I., Campbell, P. D., Doronin, I. V., Rosado, J., Wynn, A., Tighe, K. A., McDiarmid, R., Lee, J. L., K ˆ hler, G., Ellis, R., Doughty, P., Raxworthy, C. J., Scheinberg, L., Resetar, A., Sabaj, M., Schneider, G., Franzen, M., Glaw, F., B ˆ hme, W., Schweiger, S., Gemel, R., Couper, P., Amey, A., Dondorp, E., Ofer, G., Meiri, S. & van Wallach (2019) A global catalog of primary reptile type specimens. Zootaxa, 4695 (5), 438 - 450. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 4695.5.2","Iskandar, D. T. & Colijn, E. (2002) A checklist of Southeast Asian and New Guinean reptiles I. Serpentes. Biodiversity Conservation Project, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Bandung.","Dumeril, A., Bibron, G. & Dumeril, A. (1854 b) Erpetologie Generale on Histoire Naturelle Complete des Reptiles. Tome 9. Roret / Fain et Thunot, Paris. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 118797","Dumeril, A., Bibron, G. & Dumeril, A. (1854 a) Erpetologie Generale on Histoire Naturelle Complete des Reptiles. Tome 7. Roret / Fain et Thunot, Paris, xvi + 780. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 118797","Theobald, W. (1868 b) Catalogue of the reptiles of British Birma, embracing the provinces of Pegu, Martaban, and Tenasserim; with descriptions of new or little-know species. Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology), 10, 4 - 67. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / j. 1096 - 3642.1868. tb 02007. x","Boulenger, G. A. (1890) The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor and Francis, London, United Kingdom, xviii + 541. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 100797","Boulenger, G. A. (1896) Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum (Natural History). Vol. III. Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), London, United Kingdom, xiv + 727.","Smith, M. A. (1923) On a collection of reptiles and batrachians from the island of Hainan. The Journal of the Natural History Society of Siam, 6.","Mell, R. (1931) List of Chinese snakes. Lingnan Science Journal, 8, 199 - 219.","Pope, C. H. (1935) The reptiles of China. Turtles, crocodilians, snakes and lizards. Natural History of Central Asia Vol. 10, New York, 604 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 12104","Bourret, R. (1936) Les Serpents de l'Indochine. Imprimerie Henri Basuyau & Cie., Toulouse.","Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, including the whole of the Indo-Chinese Subregion. Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol. III. - Serpentes. Taylor & Francis, London, 583 pp.","Uetz, P., Freed, P. & Hosek, J. (2022) The Reptile Database. Available from http: // www. reptile-database. org (accessed 6 February 2022)"]}

Boiga multomaculata ochracea (Theobald, 1868), comb. nov. Tawny Asian Cat Snake 1868 Dipsas ochracea Theobald: 53. 1868 Dipsas ochraceus Günther: 425. 1931 Boiga multomaculata indica Mell: 213 [partim]. 1943 Boiga ochracea walli Smith: 349 [partim]. Geographic distribution: Most of Myanmar (except for the northern portion of the country), northeastern India (Mizoram), Bangladesh, Thailand north of 18° N latitude, and northern Laos (own observation; Smith 1943; Whitaker & Captain 2004; Ahmed et al. 2009; Das 2010; Hasan et al. 2014; Wallach et al. 2014; Chan-ard et al. 2015; Lalremsanga & Lalronunga 2017; Lalremsanga et al. 2018; Hmar et al. 2020). Type material.The description of Dipsas ochracea is based on two specimens from “ Rangoon ” and “Maulmain”, but the two syntypes are not located and must be regarded as lost (see Introduction). In agreement with Art. 72.2 and Art. 75 of the Code, we here designate BMNH 1946.1.2.60 (formerly BMNH 68.4.3.16) (Figs. 11 and 12) as neotype of Dipsas ochracea Theobald, 1868 to ensure stability and universality by specifying a single name-bearer for this nominal taxon. With the selected specimen, which at the same time represents one of the syntypes of Dipsas ochraceus Günther, 1868, we preserve the original connection and exchange between Günther and Theobald with respect to the nearly simultaneous description and naming of an ochraceous colored Asian cat snake taxon from southern Burma. By selection of the neotype and in accordance with Art. 76.3 of the Code, the type locality is “ Pegu ”, replacing the ‘corrected’ type locality by Wallach et al. (2014:106), which includes two different divisions in southern Myanmar. Neotype. BMNH 1946.1.2.60 (formerly BMNH 68.4.3.16), an adult female from “ Pegu ” [Bago, Bago Region, Myanmar, approx. 17.32°N, 96.47°E], collected by William Theobald and donated to the BMNH collection in spring 1868. Description of the neotype. Adult female, indicated by the absence of hemipenes; 1/1 loreal, wider than high; nasal scale completely divided; 1/1 preocular; 1/1 supraocular; 2/2 postoculars, upper not reaching onto top of head; 2 prefrontals; 2/2 anterior and 4/3 posterior temporals; supralabials 8/8, 3 rd –5 th supralabials entering eye; 12/11 infralabials, first five in contact with anterior chin shields; dorsal scales in 19-19-15 rows, smooth with paired tiny apical pits on body and paired or triple apical pits on dorsocaudal scales; vertebral scale row significantly enlarged; one preventral and 237 ventrals; cloacal plate entire; 98 paired subcaudal scales. Body slender; tail long (TL/SVL 0.239); SVL 889 mm; TL 212 mm; head length measured from tip of snout to posterior border of parietals 18.3 mm, head length measured from tip of snout to posterior edge of mandible 23.8 mm, head width 15.5 mm; diameter eye 4.2 mm; distance anterior border eye to tip of snout 7.3 mm. Dentition. Maxillary bone with 11/10 prediastemal teeth, followed by a distinct diastema which is 68% longer than the socket of the last prediastemal tooth and followed by two distinctly enlarged, grooved and posteriorly bent postdiastemal teeth. Prediastemal teeth slightly decrease in size posteriorly, the anterior three distinctly posteriorly hooked, the following with less pronounced curvature. On the left side, prediastemal teeth number one, three, five, seven, nine, 11, and second postdiastemal loose. On the right side, prediastemal tooth six broken, teeth one, three, five, and seven and second postdiastemal tooth loose. Medial to each maxillary tooth is a single replacement tooth at different growth stages. Palatine bone with 6/6 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter that the prediastemal teeth and slightly decreasing in size posteriorly. Second tooth on left side broken. Teeth one, three and five loose on right side. Lateral to each palatine tooth is a single replacement tooth at different growth stages. Pterygoid bone with 10/9 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter than the palatine tooth, gradually decreasing in size posteriorly. Teeth one, three, five, seven and nine loose on left side. Teeth one, three, five, seven and eight loose on right side. The posterior 58% of the pterygoid bone are without teeth. Mandibular bone with 18/17 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter than maxillary teeth, gradually decreasing in size posteriorly. Medial to each mandibular tooth is a single replacement tooth in different growth stages. Tooth two broken, teeth one, three, four, 15 and 17 loose on left side. Teeth one, three, nine, 12 and 14 loose on right side. The neotype of B. m. ochracea coloration after approximately 150 years preservation in ca. 70% ethanol was recorded as follows: Dorsal ground color of head body and tail with intact “Oberhäutchen” uniform Drab (Color 19), body parts without “Oberhäutchen” uniform Light Lavender (201); interstitial skin Fawn Color (258); venter of head, body and tail same color as described for dorsal body. Dorsal scale reduction formula. [table omitted] Variation. Individuals of this subspecies are either blotched or immaculate whereas specimens with an intermediate color pattern have not been reported yet (Fig. 13). For variation in morphometrics and scalation see Table 1. Variation in dentition. Ten to 13 prediastemal teeth followed by a distinct diastema and two enlarged grooved postdiastemal teeth; six palatine, eight to 13 pterygoid, and 15 to 18 dental teeth. Variation in live coloration and pattern. Two color morphs, blotched and unicolored are known. The blotched morph resembles the color and pattern of brownish individuals of the nominate subspecies. Dorsal ground color of the unicolored morph Pale Cinnamon (Color 55) to Dark Salmon Color (59), interstitial skin Pale Neutral Grey (296), posterior supralabials and infralabials Chamois (84) with Dark Salmon Color (59) edges. Venter of head, body and tail Pale Buff (1). Iris Light Chrome Orange (76) or Dark Salmon Color (59), pupil Sepia (286). Natural History. Boiga m. ochracea is mostly arboreal, crepuscular and nocturnal. It is known to inhabit different forest types, parks and gardens and agricultural land like banana plantations in lowlands, mid hills and submontane regions, from around 10 m up to 1884 m a.s.l. It is reported to feed on birds and their eggs, and lizards (our observations; Whitaker & Captain 2004; Mahony et al. 2009; Das 2010; Hasan et al. 2014)., Published as part of Köhler, Gunther, Charunrochana, Panupong Thammachoti, Mogk, Linda, Than, Ni Lar, Kurniawan, Nia, Kadafi, Ahmad Muammar, Das, Abhijit, Tillack, Frank & O'Shea, Mark, 2023, A taxonomic revision of Boiga multomaculata (Boie, 1827) and B. ochracea (Theobald, 1868), with the description of a new subspecies (Squamata, Serpentes, Colubridae), pp. 151-193 in Zootaxa 5270 (2) on pages 174-177, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5270.2.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7896950, {"references":["Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, including the whole of the Indo-Chinese Subregion. Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol. III. - Serpentes. Taylor & Francis, London, 583 pp.","Whitaker, R. & Captain, A. (2004) Snakes of India. The field guide. Draco Books, Chennai, 479 pp.","Ahmed, M. F., Das, A. & Dutta S. K. (2009) Amphibians and Reptiles of Northeast India. A photographic Guide. Aaranyak, Guwahati, India.","Das, I. (2010) A field guide to the reptiles of South-East Asia. New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd., London, 376 pp.","Hasan, M., Islam, M. M., Kuramoto, M., Kurabayashi, A. & Sumida, M. (2014) Description of two new species of Microhyla (Anura: Microhylidae) from Bangladesh. Zootaxa, 3755 (5), 401 - 418. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 3755.5.1","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: a Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, xxvii + 1237.","Lalremsanga, H. T. & Lalronunga, S. (2017) Mizoram Rul Chanchin [Snakes of Mizoram] [in Mizo]. Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Network (BIOCONE), Aizwal, 132 pp.","Lalremsanga, H. T., Sailo, S. & Chinliansiama, H. (2018) Diversity of snakes (Reptilia: Squamata) and role of environmental factors in their distribution in Mizoram, Northeast India. Advances in Environmental Chemistry, 265 - 268.","Hmar, G. Z., Muansanga, L., Biakzuala, L., Lalrinsanga, R. & Lalremsanga, H. T. (2020) Inventory survey on the ophidian fauna of Reiek Community Reserved Forest, Mamit district, Mizoram, India. Journal of Environmental Biology, 41, 821 - 826. https: // doi. org / 10.22438 / jeb / 41 / 4 (SI) / MS _ 1906","Gunther, A. (1868) Sixth account of new species of snakes in the British Museum. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, (4) 1, 425. https: // doi. org / 10.1080 / 00222936808695725","Mahony, S., Hasan, K., Kabir, M. & Ahmed, M, & Hossain, K. (2009) A catalogue of amphibians and reptiles in the collection of Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hamadryad, 34, 80 - 94."]}

Boiga multomaculata multomaculata (Boie, 1827) Ocellated Asian Cat snake 1931 B. multomaculata hainanensis Mell: 213. 1931 B. multomaculata sikiangensis Mell: 213. Geographic distribution. As currently known, B. m. multomaculata is distributed across Thailand south of 17° N latitude, central and southern Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, southern China (including Hainan) and on the Indonesian islands of Java, Bali, and probably Sumatra (Zhao & Adler 1993; David & Vogel 1996; Nguyen et al. 2009; Das 2010; Chan-ard et al. 2015). There are a number of incorrect listings of this taxon. An erroneous Singapore record goes back to Cantor and led to B. multomaculata being listed for West Malaysia, too. The absence of B. multomaculata on Malayan Peninsula was already clarified by Smith (1930:63–64). For Sulawesi, Borneo, Singapore (West Malaysia) no reliable records are available or no vouchers are preserved in any collection. However, various authors still listed some of these implausible localities in very recent literature and in databases. David & Vogel (1996) report the presence of B. multomaculata on Sumatra but there are no references that provide a reliable record for the taxon from this island. Most probably the inclusion of Sumatra is based on a misinterpretation of a paper from Franz Werner (1900) about a collection from Sumatra purchased by Schneider. This paper includes a table with species that occur on Sumatra set against adjacent regions/islands. In this table B. multomaculata is listed, but not for Sumatra! It is possible someone reading the title of Werner’s paper and seeing B. multomaculata listed, came to the incorrect conclusion that it was present. Type material. The description of Dipsas multomaculata is based on an unknown number of specimens. Our research has revealed that specimens from the collections in Leiden and Berlin can be attributed to the original syntype series (see Introduction). In agreement with Art. 74.7 of the Code, we here designate RMNH. RENA 979b (Figs. 8 and 9) as lectotype of Dipsas multomaculata Boie, 1827 to introduce a standard of application for the species group name multomaculata Boie with a single name-bearer. Lectotype. RMNH. RENA 979 b, an adult female from Java, collector and date of collection not stated in RMNH inventory catalogue. Paralectotypes. RMNH. RENA 979 d an adult female, RMNH. RENA 979 e a subadult female, RMNH 979 f a juvenile female, and ZMB 50879 an adult female, same collecting data as for the lectotype. Description of the lectotype. Adult female, indicated by the absence of hemipenes; 1/1 loreal, wider than high; nasal scale completely divided; 1/1 preocular; 1/1 supraocular; 2/2 postoculars, upper not reaching onto top of head; 2 prefrontals; 2/1 anterior and 2/2 posterior temporals; supralabials 8/8, 3 rd –5 th supralabials entering eye; 11/11 infralabials, first four in contact with anterior chin shields; dorsal scales in 19-19-15 rows, smooth with single tiny apical pits on body and single or paired apical pits on dorsocaudal scales; vertebral scale row significantly enlarged; no preventral; 214 ventrals; cloacal plate entire; 89 paired subcaudal scales. Body slender; tail long (TL/SVL 0.243); SVL 592 mm; TL 144 mm, head length measured from tip of snout to posterior border of parietals 14.2 mm, head length measured from tip of snout to posterior edge of mandible 18.8 mm, head width 11.1 mm; diameter eye 3.3 mm; distance anterior border eye to tip of snout 5.2 mm. Dentition. Maxillary bone with 11/11 prediastemal teeth, followed by a distinct diastema which is 65% longer than the socket of the last prediastemal tooth and followed by two distinctly enlarged, grooved and posteriorly bent postdiastemal teeth. Prediastemal teeth slightly decrease in size posteriorly, the anterior two distinctly posteriorly hooked, the following with less pronounced curvature. On the left side, prediastemal teeth number five, seven, nine, 11, and second postdiastemal loose. On the right side, prediastemal teeth two, four, five, and second postdiastemal tooth loose. Medial to each maxillary tooth is a single replacement tooth at different growth stages. Palatine bone with 6/6 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter that the prediastemal teeth and slightly decreasing in size posteriorly. Tooth one broken, teeth two, four and six loose on left side. Tooth three broken, teeth two, four and six loose on the right side. Lateral to each palatine tooth is a single replacement tooth at different growth stages. Pterygoid bone with 12/12 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter than the palatine tooth, gradually decreasing in size posteriorly. Teeth one, three, four, five and 12 loose on left side. Teeth three, four, five and nine loose on right side. The posterior 60% of the pterygoid bone are without teeth. Mandibular bone with 17/17 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter than maxillary teeth, gradually decreasing in size posteriorly. Medial to each mandibular tooth is a single replacement tooth in different growth stages. Teeth two, four and six loose on left side. Teeth two, four, six, eight and 10 loose on right side. Coloration after approximately 200 years preservation in ca. 70% ethanol was recorded as follows: Dorsal ground color Tawny Olive (Color 17) with Natal Brown (49) mottling on scales and with 62 dorsolateral pairs of Sepia (279) colored blotches on body that have a paler (Amber 51 suffused with Smoke Gray 266) center and a white to Pale Buff (1) border; dorsolateral body blotches separated by a Pale Buff (1) vertebral interspace; below the dorsolateral row of blotches an alternating row of smaller, irregularly shaped blotches with the same coloration; dorsal head with same ground color as dorsal body and a V-shaped Sepia (279) marking open towards the neck, starting from the inner posterior edges of the internasals and ending at the level of the last third of the last supralabial; an oval marking on the neck partly inside the bifurcation of the V-shaped element and with the same coloration as described for the body blotches; a Sepia (279) colored postocular stripe ending at the angle of the mouth; edges of posterior upper labials and edges of infralabials Sepia (279). Venter Cream Color (12) with Tawny Olive (17) colored alternating irregular shaped spots; ventral head Cream Color (12) without prominent markings. Dorsal scale reduction formula. [table omitted] Variation. Paralectotypes and additional examined material agree well with the lectotype in general appearance, morphometrics and scalation (Table 1). Variation in dentition. Nine to 13 prediastemal teeth followed by a distinct diastema and two enlarged grooved postdiastemal teeth; six to seven palatine, eight to 12 pterygoid, and 17 to 19 dental teeth. Variation in live coloration and pattern. Only a blotched morph is known (Fig. 10). The dorsal ground color can vary from Pale Neutral Gray (color 296) to True Cinnamon (260), blotches on body Dark Grayish Brown (284) to Sepia (286), edged Smoky White (261) or Cream White (52). Iris may vary, in accordance with the dorsal ground color, from Pale Neutral Gray (color 296) to Medium Neutral Grey (299) or from Orange-Rufous (56) to True Cinnamon (260), with black Sepia (286) pupil. Ventral head and throat Smoky White (261), rest of venter can vary from Pale Neutral Gray (296) to Cream White (52) with small Pale Neutral Grey (296) or Cinnamon (255) spots. Natural History. Boiga m. multomaculata is arboreal and nocturnal and known to inhabit different forest types, agricultural land and gardens from near sea level up to 1600 m above sea level (a.s.l.), where it is found in bushes, bamboo groves and trees. It is reported to feed on birds and lizards. The reproduction is oviparous with clutch sizes of four to eight eggs. The total length of hatchlings vary from 195 to 200 mm (Mell 1922; Pope 1935; Manthey & Grossmann 1997; McKay 2006; Das 2010; Chan-ard et al. 2015). Kopstein (1938) reported amphigonia retardata for populations from Java with additional ovipositions of uniquely fertilized females after two and eight months, respectively., Published as part of Köhler, Gunther, Charunrochana, Panupong Thammachoti, Mogk, Linda, Than, Ni Lar, Kurniawan, Nia, Kadafi, Ahmad Muammar, Das, Abhijit, Tillack, Frank & O'Shea, Mark, 2023, A taxonomic revision of Boiga multomaculata (Boie, 1827) and B. ochracea (Theobald, 1868), with the description of a new subspecies (Squamata, Serpentes, Colubridae), pp. 151-193 in Zootaxa 5270 (2) on pages 170-173, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5270.2.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7896950, {"references":["Boie, F. (1827) Bemerkungen uber Merrem's Versuch eines Systems der Amphibien. Marburg, 1820 1 te Lieferung, Ophidier. Isis von Oken, Jena, 20, 508 - 566.","Zhao, E. - M. & Adler, K. (1993) Herpetology of China. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (Contributions to Herpetology, 10), Oxford, OH, 522 pp.","David, P. & Vogel, G. (1996) The Snakes of Sumatra: An Annotated Checklist and Key with Natural History Notes. Eidtion Chimaira, Frankfurt, 259 pp.","Nguyen, V. S., Ho, T. C. & Nguyen, Q. T. (2009) Herpetofauna of Vietnam. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt, 768 pp.","Das, I. (2010) A field guide to the reptiles of South-East Asia. New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd., London, 376 pp.","Smith, M. A. (1930) The Reptilia and Amphibia of the Malay Peninsula from the Isthmus of Kra to Singapore including the adjacent islands (A supplement to Dr. G. A. Boulenger's Reptilia and Batrachia, 1912). Bulletin of the Raffles Museum, 3, i - xviii + 1 - 149.","Werner, F. (1900) Reptilien und Batrachier aus Sumatra, gesammelt Herrn Gustav Schneider jr. im Jahre 1897 - 98. Zoologische Jahrbucher. Abtheilung fur Systematik, Geographie und Biologie der Thiere, 13, 479 - 508, pl. 31 - 35.","Mell, R. (1922) Beitrage zur Fauna sinica I. Die Vertebraten Sudchinas, Feldlisten und Feldnoten der Sauger, V ˆ gel, Reptilien, Batrachier. Archiv fur Naturgeschichte A, 88, 1 - 134.","Pope, C. H. (1935) The reptiles of China. Turtles, crocodilians, snakes and lizards. Natural History of Central Asia Vol. 10, New York, 604 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 12104","Manthey, U. & Grossmann, W. (1997) Amphibien und Reptilien Sudostasiens. Natur und Tier Verlag, Munster, 512 pp.","McKay, J. L. (2006) A field guide to the amphibians and reptiles of Bali. Krieger Publishing Co, Malabar FL, vii + 138.","Kopstein, F. (1938) Ein Beitrag zur Eierkunde und zur Fortpflanzung der Malaiischen Reptilien. Bulletin of the Raffles Museum, 14, 81 - 167, pl. vi - xxvii."]}

Boiga stoliczkae (Wall, 1909) Stoliczka´s Asian Cat Snake 1909 [Dipsadomorphus] stoliczkae Wall: 155. Geographic distribution. In the west from central Nepal (ca. 83°51’E) through Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan to Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in northeastern India (north and west of the Brahmaputra valley) (own observation; Wall 1909; Smith 1943; Fleming, JR. & Fleming, SR. 1974; Kramer 1977; Ahmed & Dasgupta 1992; Bauer & Günther 1992; Gruber 2002; Shah & Tiwari 2004; Whitaker & Captain 2004; Sanyal & Gayen 2006; Agarwal et al. 2010; Purkayastha 2013; Wallach et al. 2014; Das et al. 2016; Wangyal & Das 2021). Type material. Wall (1909:155) mentioned that he has examined 39 specimens of this new species from the “neighbourhood of Darjiling” (Darjeeling, West Bengal state, India), which is characterised by having 21 [midbody] scale rows, 218–252 ventrals and 100–119 subcaudals. He did not specify particular specimens by inventory number and with the exception of the British Museum (Natural History) he does not mention any other collection in which the type material could be deposited. However, it is documented through his publications (e.g., Wall 1909; 1921) that he examined for his studies not only his own material but beside specimens from the British Museum also material from various collections in India (e.g., BNHS Mumbai, ZSI Kolkata, and St. Joseph’s College in Darjeeling). After his retirement in 1925 he presented parts his own collection, including type specimens, to the British Museum (Natural History) in London (Smith 1951). Based on information provided by Andrew Stimson, Curator of Herpetology at the BMNH, Kramer (1977:735) was the first to mention inventory numbers for the type material of D. stoliczkae and regarded a series of eight specimens, i.e., BMNH 72.4.17.119, 72.4.17.386, BMNH 74.4.1193–94, BMNH 94.12.31.55, and 1909.3.13 –15 as syntypes. The two specimens mentioned by Wall (1909) and already considered by him as doubtful with respect to the locality “ Burma “, refer to BMNH 74.4.1193–1194 and were presented by R.H. Beddome (see also Introduction, and Wall 1908:714 footnote; Wall 1910:791 footnote). All aforementioned specimens are also marked as syntypes in the inventory ledger of the herpetological collection of the BMNH, now NHM London. However, some other specimens must also be regarded as part of the original series of D. stoliczkae, since they came from “Darjeeling“ and where part of Wall´s donation to the collection in London, registered in 1930, viz. BMNH 1930.5.8.648–649, 1930.5.8.650, and 1930.5.5.651. Thus, the material in the NHM London alone represents only a portion of the original specimens examined by Wall. Therefore, we also consider specimens in Indian collections as potential type material of D. stoliczkae that could have been available to Wall if the temporal context, locality, and morphological characters are consistent with those in his original description. Putative syntypes that fit Wall’s diagnosis, were collected in the “neighbourhood of Darjiling”, and which were already in the respective collection prior to 1909 include BNHS 1772 from “Tindharia” (~ 20 km southeast of Darjeeling), and ZSIK 7869, 7873, 7878, 8476 and 11367 all from “Darjeeling”. In agreement with Art. 74.7 of the Code, we here designate BMNH 94.12.31.55 (Figs. 17 and 18) as lectotype of Dipsadomorphus stoliczkae Wall, 1909 to introduce a standard of application for the species group name stoliczkae Wall by a single name-bearer. Lectotype. BMNH 94.12.31.55 (Figs. 17 and 18), an adult male from “ Darjeeling ” (West Bengal state, India), presented by William Thomas Blanford. Paralectotypes. BMNH 72.4.17.119 and 72.4.17.386, both females from „Darjeeling“, presented by T.C. Jerdon; BMNH 74.4.1193–1194, both females from „ Burma “ [in error, most probably from the Eastern Himalayas], presented by R.H. Beddome; BMNH 1909.3.13 –15, halfgrown, one female and two with unknown sex; BMNH 1930.5.8.648–649, two skulls, 1930.5.8.650, genitals, and 1930.5.5.651, three vertebrae, all from „ Darjeeling “ collected and presented by F. Wall; BNHS 1772, a female from „Tindharia, Darjeeling“, collector unknown; ZSIK 7869, male, 7873, 7878, 8476 and 11367 all females from „Darjeeling“ collected and presented by British botanist George Alexander Gammie (1864–1935). Description of the lectotype. Adult male, indicated by the presence of hemipenes; 1/1 loreal, wider than high; nasal scale completely divided; 1/1 preocular; 1/1 supraocular; 2/2 postoculars, upper not reaching onto top of head; 2 prefrontals; 2/2 anterior and 2/3 posterior temporals; supralabials 8/8, 3 rd –5 th supralabials entering eye; 11/11 infralabials, first four in contact with anterior chin shields; 21 dorsal scales in 19-19-15 rows, smooth with single tiny apical pits on body and single or paired apical pits on dorsocaudal scales; vertebral scale row significantly enlarged; no preventral; 235 ventrals; cloacal plate entire; 111 paired subcaudal scales. Body slender; tail long (TL/ SVL 0.282); SVL 740 mm; TL 209 mm; head length measured from tip of snout to posterior border of parietals 16.5 mm, head length measured from tip of snout to posterior edge of mandible 21.8 mm, head width 13.0 mm; diameter eye 3.9 mm; distance anterior border eye to tip of snout 5.2 mm. Maxillary bone with 10/11 prediastemal teeth, followed by a very distinct diastema which is 125% longer than the socket of the last prediastemal tooth and followed by two distinctly enlarged, grooved and posteriorly bent postdiastemal teeth. Prediastemal teeth slightly decrease in size posteriorly, the anterior two distinctly posteriorly hooked, the following with less pronounced curvature. On the left side, prediastemal teeth number one, three, five and seven missing, teeth six and eight broken, tooth nine and first postdiastemal tooth loose. On the right side, prediastemal teeth two, four, six, eight, 10 and first postdiastemal tooth loose. Medial to each maxillary tooth is a single replacement tooth at different growth stages. Palatine bone with 6/6 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter that the prediastemal teeth and slightly decreasing in size posteriorly. Anterior two teeth missing on left side. Tooth two missing on the right side. Lateral to each palatine tooth is a single replacement tooth at different growth stages. Pterygoid bone with 10/10 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter than the palatine tooth, gradually decreasing in size posteriorly. Teeth two, four, six and eight loose on left side. Teeth two, four, six, seven and nine loose on right side. The posterior 49% of the pterygoid bone are without teeth. Mandibular bone with 17/17 posteriorly curved teeth, shorter than maxillary teeth, gradually decreasing in size posteriorly. Medial to each mandibular tooth is a single replacement tooth in different growth stages. Teeth one and two broken, teeth two, four, six, seven, nine, 11, 13 and 15 loose, and tooth 16 missing on left side. Teeth two, four, six, eight and nine loose, teeth 11, 13, and 15 missing on right side. Coloration after about 130 years preservation in ca. 70% ethanol was recorded as follows: Dorsal ground color Cinnamon-Drab (Color 50) with Sepia (286) interstitial skin; dorsal head with same ground color as dorsal body, upper and lower labials Light Buff (2). Venter of head, body and tail Light Buff (2) without markings. Dorsal scale reduction formula. – 10+V(147) 3+4(152) – 8+V(192) (10)21 ----------- 20 ------------- 19 ----------- 17 ------------ 16 ------------ 15(235). 3+4(142) – 3+4(152) 8+V(187) – Variation. Paralectotypes and additional examined material agree well with the lectotype in general appearance, morphometrics and scalation (Table 1). Variation in dentition. Nine to 14 prediastemal teeth followed by a distinct diastema and two enlarged grooved postdiastemal teeth; five to eight palatine, nine to 15 pterygoid, and 15 to 21 dental teeth. Variation in live coloration and pattern. Only a unicolored morph is known (Fig. 19). The dorsal ground color may vary from Cinnamon (255) or Cinnamon-Rufous (31) to Tawny (60) in adults or Gem Ruby (65) in young individuals. Rarely a faint Cinnamon Brown (43) streak is running from the posterior border of the eye to the angle of the mouth. In some individuals a small faint banded dorsal body pattern is visible, which is caused by the Medium Neutral Grey (298) interstitial skin. Lower half of supralabials, infralabials, throat and first third of ventral body Pale Buff (1) or Chamois (84), rest of venter and tail Yellow Ocher (14) or Tawny Olive (17). Iris resembling the dorsal ground color of body and can vary from Cinnamon (255) to Gem Ruby (65); pupil Sepia (286). Natural History. Boiga stoliczkae is mostly semiarboreal, crepuscular and nocturnal. It is known to inhabit open forest types, agricultural land, human habitations, and gardens, where it is found on low vegetation, bushes and walls. The altitudinal distribution ranges from lowlands, mid hills and submontane regions, from around 85 m up to 2000 m a.s.l. It is reported to feed on birds, their eggs, lizards, snakes (Trachischium fuscum), and small rodents (our observations; Shaw et al. 1941; Greene 1989; Tillack 1999; Gruber 2002; Jha & Thapa K. 2002; Shah & Tiwari 2004; Nepali & Singh 2020; Pradhan 2021)., Published as part of Köhler, Gunther, Charunrochana, Panupong Thammachoti, Mogk, Linda, Than, Ni Lar, Kurniawan, Nia, Kadafi, Ahmad Muammar, Das, Abhijit, Tillack, Frank & O'Shea, Mark, 2023, A taxonomic revision of Boiga multomaculata (Boie, 1827) and B. ochracea (Theobald, 1868), with the description of a new subspecies (Squamata, Serpentes, Colubridae), pp. 151-193 in Zootaxa 5270 (2) on pages 180-183, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5270.2.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7896950, {"references":["Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155. https: // doi. org / 10.26515 / rzsi / v 3 / i 2 / 1909 / 163268","Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, including the whole of the Indo-Chinese Subregion. Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol. III. - Serpentes. Taylor & Francis, London, 583 pp.","Kramer, E. (1977) Zur Schlangenfauna Nepals. Review Suisse de Zoologie, 84, 721 - 761. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. part. 91420","Ahmed, S. & Dasgupta, G. (1992) Reptilia. In: Gosh, A. K. (Ed.), Zoological Survey of India, State Fauna Series 3, Fauna of West Bengal. Part 2, Calcutta, pp. 1 - 65.","Bauer, A. M. & Gunther, R. (1992) A preliminary report on the reptile fauna of the Kingdom of Bhutan with the description of a new species of scincid lizard. Asian Herpetological Research, 4, 23 - 36. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. part. 6178","Gruber, U. (2002) Family Colubridae (colubrid snakes). In: Schleich, H. H. & Kastle, W. (Eds.). Amphibians and Reptiles of Nepal. A. R. G. Gantner Verlag, Ruggell, pp. 803 - 950.","Shah, K. B. & Tiwari, S. (2004) Herpetofauna of Nepal: A conservation companion. IUCN Nepal, Kathmandu, viii + 237.","Whitaker, R. & Captain, A. (2004) Snakes of India. The field guide. Draco Books, Chennai, 479 pp.","Sanyal, D. P. & Gayen, N. C. (2006) Reptilia. In: Alfred, J. (Ed.). Zoological Survey of India. State Fauna Series 13. Part 1. Fauna of Arunachal Pradesh., Kolkata, pp. 247 - 284.","Agarwal, I., Mistry, V. K. & Athreya, R. (2010) A preliminary checklist of the reptiles of Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, West Kameng District, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 17, 81 - 93.","Purkayastha, J. (2013) An amateur's guide to reptiles of Assam. EBH Publishers, Guwahati, 146 pp.","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: a Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, xxvii + 1237.","Das, A., Sharma, P., Surendran, H., Nath, A., Gosh, S., Dutta, D., Mondol, J. & Wangdi, Y. (2016) Additions to the herpetofauna of Royal Manas National Park, Bhutan, with six new country records. Herpetology Notes, 9, 261 - 278.","Wangyal, J. T. & Das, I. (2021) A guide to the reptiles of Bhutan. Bhutan Ecological Society, Thimphu, 109 pp.","Wall, F. (1921) Ophidia Taprobanica or the snakes of Ceylon. H. R. Cottle, Government Printer, Colombo, 581 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 53694","Smith, M. A. (1951) Frank Wall, 1868 - 1950. Copeia, 1951, 113 - 114. https: // doi. org / 10.2307 / 1437539","Wall, F. (1908) A popular treatise on the common Indian snakes, Part VIII. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 18, 711 - 735.","Wall, F. (1910) A popular treatise on the common Indian snakes, Part XII. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 19, 775 - 792.","Shaw, G. E., Shebbeare, E. O. & Barker, P. E. (1941) The snakes of northern Bengal and Sikkim, Part IX. Journal of the Darjeeling Natural History Society, 15, 60 - 68.","Greene, H. W. (1989) Ecological, evolutionary, and conservation implications of feeding biology in old world cat snakes, genus Boiga (Colubridae). Proceedings of the California Academy of Science, 46, 193 - 207.","Tillack, F. (1999) Das Portrait: Boiga ochracea stoliczkae. Sauria, 21, 1 - 2.","Nepali, P. B. & Singh, N. B. (2020) Documentation of herpetofaunal diversity in Nawalparasi district, Nepal. Uttar Pradesh Journal of Zoology, 41, 56 - 70.","Pradhan, A. (2021) Boiga ochracea, Tawny Cat Snake, Diet. Herpetological Review, 52, 147."]}

Boiga ochracea In 1868 the description of Dipsas ochraceus was published by the German zoologist Albert Karl Ludwig Gotthilf Günther (1830–1914), then an assistant at the British Museum (Natural History) tasked with identifying 2,000 snake specimens in the collection. In his brief description of this species Günther (1868: 425), wrote: “We have received this new snake from Mr. Theobald, who named it “, thereby attributing the authorship to William Theobald (1829– 1908), a naturalist attached to the British Geological Survey of India. To complicate matters, Theobald (1868:53) also published a description of Dipsas ochracea, in Latin and English, in the same year. The Reptile Database (Uetz et al. 2022) suggested that Theobald’s paper was published prior to Günther’s paper, pointing out that Günther referred to Theobald in his paper, but without providing a published source. The editors may have assumed that Günther had access to Theobald’s already published paper, thereby attributing authorship to Theobald, 1868. Wallach et al. (2014) were of the contrary opinion and proposed that the first description of D. ochraceus appeared in the Günther paper, and the authorship should therefore read “Theobald in Günther, 1868 ”. This question over the priority of authorship can only be resolved by determining which of these two papers was published first. Günther published his description in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, series 4, volume 1, number 6, which was published on 1st June 1868 (Evenhuis 2003; F. Tillack unpubl. obs.). Theobald published his account in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London (Zoology), volume 10, number 41. The year of publication is often given as 1868 (Smith 1943; Wallach et al. 2014; Uetz et al. 2022) but the situation is somewhat unclear. Following its title, Theobald’s paper reads “By W. Theobald. Jun., Geological Survey of India. Communicated by G. Busk, Esq., Sec. L.S. [Read November 7, 1867.]”. The paper was therefore presented orally at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London in late 1867, but that does not constitute “published” according to the Code. According to the title page of the journal, volume 10 was not published until 1870 (Theobald 1868b) which would seem to give priority to Günther’s 1868 paper, but this was not the actual date of publication of Theobald’s paper. According to the archives of the Linnean Society of London “pages 4–67 of Volume 10 of the Journal of the Linnean Society of London (Zoology) were issued on 30 May 1868. The reason the front page is dated 1870 (May 20th) is because that is when the title and contents page were finished, ready for the rest of the journal to be bound” (Vida Milovanovic, Linnean Society of London, pers. comm.; F. Tillack unpubl. obs.). Therefore, Theobald’s description takes precedence over Günther’s paper, by two days, and the correct citation should be Theobald (1868). Amongst the distinguishing characteristics of D. ochraceus, Günther documented 19 dorsal scale rows, 239–242 ventral scales, and 100 subcaudal scales. His description was based on the two specimens obtained from Theobald, the largest of which he measured at 44 inches (1.12 m), and both of which, he reports, were collected at Pegu (now Bago, 17°19′ N, 96°28 E), central Myanmar. Theobald’s description differs in a number of respects from that of Günther. He states that he personally collected the first specimen at Rangoon (now Yangon, 16°48′ N, 96°09 E), and that his second specimen was collected by Colonel David Browne, at Maulmain (=Moulmein, now Mawlamyine, 16°29′ N, 97°38′ E) in the Tenasserim Region (now Tanintharyi Region, southern Myanmar). He also measured the first specimen at fully nine inches (229 mm) shorter than the measurement provided by Günther, and finally, Theobald reports that both specimens exhibited dorsal scale counts of 19 on the neck, 17 on the body, and 15 near the tail, in contrast to the dorsal count of 19 provided by Günther, presumably taken at midbody, and a count supported by Boulenger (1896) and Stimson (see later). Given the reported differences in localities, collectors and description, there is no doubt that the two authors described their species using different specimens. However, regarding the reported differences in the number of dorsal scale rows at midbody, it has to be noted that many Boiga have a rather chaotic dorsal scale row reduction which can go up and down more than three times within a range of only 10 corresponding ventral scales “at midbody”. Furthermore, the measured midbody can be different from the midbody position determined by counting half the number of ventrals. Both Günther’s syntypes, an adult female with an SVL 889 + 212 TL = 1101 mm total length and an adult male with an SVL 611 + TL 149 = 760 mm total length, are housed in the collection of the Natural History Museum, London (BMNH 1946.1.2.60–61). As far as we are aware, the two types of D. ochracea Theobald are unlocated. They were not listed by Theobald (1868a), nor in Sclater (1891) or in Das et al. (1998). Some time ago one of us (AD) checked the collection in ZSI, Kolkata, but found no specimens marked as type for Theobald´s ochracea and none of the specimens examined by him agreed with Theobald’s description or locality. During the late 19th Century the British Museum (Natural History) received five further specimens of D. ochracea from Myanmar, i.e., two specimens (BMNH 74.4.29.1193–1194) from Myanmar, reportedly collected by the British army officer and naturalist Richard Henry Beddome (1830–1911), and three specimens (BMNH 89.2.25.37–39) from Bhamo, in Kachin State, northern Myanmar, collected by the Italian naturalist Leonardo Fea (1852–1903). Ferdinand Stoliczka (1838–1874) was a Austrian paleontologist and naturalist who worked in India during the mid 19th Century, but died of altitude sickness during a Himalayan expedition. He exhibited a considerable interest in snakes and in 1870 he reported on five specimens from the Andaman Islands which he attributed to the taxon Dipsas hexagonotus Blyth, 1855 (Stoliczka 1870). In the late 19th Century the Anglo-Belgian zoologist George Albert Boulenger (1858–1937), was Günther’s assistant at the British Museum (Natural History) and the person now tasked with the continued cataloguing of the herpetological collection. In 1890 he resurrected the genus Dipsadomorphus Fitzinger, 1843, for the African, Asian, and Australasian cat snakes previously included in the genus Dipsas (Boulenger 1890; Boulenger 1896) and he synonymised Günther’s Dipsas ochraceus with Blyth’s older Dipsadomorphus hexagonatus. Adopting this new classification, the British physician and herpetologist Major Frank Wall (1868–1950) examined Blyth’s Dipsas hexagonotus type specimen (ZSIK 8048), from “Cherrapunji, Khasi Hills, Assam ” [= Sohra, East Khasi Hills district, Meghalaya state, India] and reidentified it as a juvenile Dipsadomorphus cyaneus, now Boiga cyanea (Duméril, Bibron and Duméril, 1854) (Wall 1909). He also examined the four adult specimens in Stoliczka’s Andaman Dipsas hexagonotus, which exhibited a dorsal scale count of 21, and included them in the syntype series of his new species Dispadomorphus andamanensis, now Boiga andamanensis. The remaining specimen from Stoliczka’s Andaman series reportedly possessed 19 dorsal scale rows, but Wall commented that its description was imperfect and the specimen itself appeared to be lost. Further, Wall (1909) recognized that the mainland D. hexagonotus material he had available appeared to represent two different taxa. Five of the BMNH specimens (BMNH 1946.1.2.60–61, 89.2.25.37–39) from Myanmar, and a further nine specimens he had personally collected, all possessed 19 dorsal scale rows, 221–245 ventrals and 89–107 subcaudals which complied with the description of D. hexagonotus, and to which he applied that name, citing Stoliczka’s missing Andaman specimen as the holotype. It is curious that he sought to conserve the name “ hexagonotus ”, as Dipsadomorphus hexagonotus, by transferring it from Blyth’s holotype, now known to be a juvenile D. cyaneus, to Stoliczka’s missing and incompletely described juvenile. Fortunately, this move is illegal according to the Code (Smith 1943), meaning the name is unavailable and D. hexagonotus remains synonymized with D. cyaneus. The Myanmar population with 19 dorsal scale rows should therefore be known as D. ochracea. Two further Myanmar specimens available to Wall (BMNH 74.4.19.1193–94) exhibited a dorsal count of 21, which was more akin to that obtained from Himalayan specimens. These two specimens were reportedly collected in Myanmar, well within the range of those specimens attributed by Wall to D. hexagonotus. However, they were collected by Beddome, and Wall had already voiced criticism regarding the accuracy of Beddome’s record keeping. In the case of these two specimens he suggested that they could have easily come from “the hills to the west or north of Burma, the fauna of which closely agrees with that of the Eastern Himalayas”. Furthermore, Smith (1943) stated that Beddome never visited Burma, and therefore the long-accepted collection locality for these two specimens must be treated as extremely suspect. Similarly, a specimen of “ Boiga ochracea ” donated by Beddome to the Museum of Comparative Zoology (i.e., MCZ R-3886) is said to come from “Madras” [Chennai] at the southeast coast on India. However, the given locality is far outside the distribution limits of this group and our reexamination revealed that this specimen is a B. stoliczkae which very likely originated from the eastern Himalayas. Wall (1909) also examined 39 specimens from the Darjeeling area of West Bengal, India, which exhibited 21 dorsal scale rows, 218–252 ventrals, and 100–119 subcaudals. To this series he added a further three Darjeeling specimens in the British Museum (Natural History). Two of these (BMNH 72.4.17.119, 72.4.17.386) were collected by the British naturalist and physician Thomas Caverhill Jerdon (1811–1872), while the third specimen (BMNH 94.12.31.55) was collected by the British geologist and naturalist William Thomas Blanford (1832–1905). Finding this Eastern Himalayan taxon without a name, Wall (1909) proposed Dipsadomorphus stoliczkae, “the first reference of it having been made by Stoliczka”. Annandale (1909) discussed Wall’s (1909) paper on the forms of Dipsadomorphus, and criticizes the, in his opinion, difficult delimitation of the species introduced by Wall, particular with regard to Boiga ceylonensis, but also to other species of this genus, and considered Wall’s new species merely as forms of one species, i.e., of B. ceylonensis. Cope (1860) resurrected the name Boiga Fitzinger, 1826 and designated Coluber irregularis as type species. In 1902 the Norwegian-American zoologist Leonard Hess Stejneger (1851–1943) described a new species of rear-fanged snake from Taiwan (then Formosa), and in so doing also resurrected the genus Boiga Fitzinger, 1826 from obscurity as a senior synonym for Dipsadomorphus, the generic name it would replace for the remainder of the 20th Century. The two taxa under discussion here would therefore become Boiga ochracea (Theobald, 1868), with 19 dorsal scale rows, from NE India south and east of the Brahmaputra valley across Bangladesh to Myanmar, and B. stoliczkae (Wall, 1909), with 21 dorsal scale rows, from the Eastern Himalayas, but including Beddome’s two “Burmese” specimens. From all that we now know and have examined, B. ochracea does not occur on the Andaman or Nicobar Islands, that material being referred to Boiga andamanensis (Wall, 1909). This assumption is also confirmed by the recent studies of Chandramouli (2022: 321), who removes B. ochracea from the list of snake species occurring on the Andaman Islands. It has to be noted that B. andamanensis usually has 21 midbody DSR, rarely 19, but in preservation the coloration looks like “ ochracea ”, particular in the red color morph, a possible reason for the confusion. The next author to take a look at this group of snakes was the British physician and herpetologist Malcolm Arthur Smith (1875–1958). In 1941 he used for the first time the combination Boiga ochracea walli (as a nomen nudum) and applied this name to populations from the Andaman and Nicobar islands, and Burma. A few years later Smith (1943) synonymized B. stoliczkae with B. ochracea, stating: “The name hexagonatus must become a synonym of cyanea, and the next one available is Günther’s ochracea. The type has 21 scale rows and is therefore the Himalayan form, and the locality (Pegu) from which it is said to have come is in no doubt an error. Beddome, from whom the specimen came, was never in Burma, and his localities have been shown to be incorrect on many occasions.” Smith (1943) defined his eastern Himalayan B. ochracea ochracea as exhibiting 21-21-17 dorsal rows, 223–252 ventrals, and 100–119 subcaudals, and described the populations of B. ochracea from “ Burma, south of lat. 25°; Tenasserim; the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.”, with 19-19-15 dorsal rows, 221–246 ventrals, and 89–107 subcaudals, as a new subspecies, formally named B. ochracea walli. On the BMNH ledger and on the jar labels, the BMNH specimens collected by Leonardo Fea at Bhamo, Myanmar, (i.e., BMNH 89.3.25.37–39) are declared as syntypes. However, this does not constitute a type selection according to the Code and is therefore not a valid syntype designation because it is not following the principles of typification. Smith (1943) did not cite any type material from his B. ochracea walli in its original description. Therefore, all specimens available to Smith at the time of the description of B. ochracea walli constitute the syntypes, not just the three specimens subsequently labeled as “ syntypes ” in the BMNH collection. The list of potential syntypes of Smith’s B. ochracea walli obviously includes specimens present at BMNH at the time but it is known that Smith travelled in South and Southeast Asia and visited all the main collections there in the preparation of his “Fauna of British India ” series, the third, Serpentes, volume of which was ready to go to print in 1938 (delayed until 1943 due to WWII). He examined material from the collections in Bombay, Calcutta, Paris (Smith 1943:v–vi), Vienna (Smith 1928) and Berlin (pers. data FT, he was in contact with Mell and arranged specimen loans with ZMB), and also loans from different US museums and from Leiden and Colombo (Smith 1943). So it cannot be ruled out that specimens from these collections are also putative syntypes of Smith´s B. o. walli. Wallach et al. (2014) treated walli as full species and mentioned that this taxon is based on a single name-bearing type specimen, but they provided no inventory number for that specimen. According to Art. 72.4.1 of the Code (“The type series of a nominal speciesgroup taxon consists of all the specimens included by the author in the new nominal taxon (whether directly or by bibliographic reference) …”, we suggest that in the case of B. ochracea walli at least the following specimens belong to the original syntype series: BMNH 1946.1.2.60–61 from Pegu (at the same time syntypes of Dipsas ochraceus Günther), BMNH 89.3.25.37–39 from Bhamo, and specimens from the Andamans and Nicobars, at least from the BMNH collection which were available to Smith. Smith appears to have made a number of errors that had a considerably impact on the nomenclature and proposed distributions of these taxa. 1) It was Theobald, not Günther, who first described ochracea in 1868. 2) The ochracea type specimens (plural not singular) were recorded by Günther, as having come from Pegu (= Bago), but Theobald’s syntypes were collected from Rangoon (= Yangon) and Maulmain (= Mawlamyine). Regardless of any confusion over precise localities, the two syntypes described by Theobald and the two other described by Günther were collected in southern Myanmar, not the eastern Himalayas or northern Myanmar. 3) Günther recorded the dorsal scale rows of these two specimens as 19, while Theobald reports 19-17-15 rows, but neither author reported a count of 21 for these specimens. 4) Beddome was responsible for collecting the two specimens reported as from “Burma”, not the two specimens from Pegu, and it is this locality that is now doubted by most authors, and it was these two specimens that exhibited 21 dorsal scale rows at midbody. Not all authors accepted Smith’s synonymy of stoliczkae with B. ochracea, i.e., Kramer (1977) who reported that Andrew Stimson (BMNH) had checked the syntypes of Günther´s D ochraceus (BMNH 1946.1.2.60–61) and confirmed their dorsal scale counts as 19, and that they were collected in southern Myanmar and therefore he did not synonymise stoliczkae with ochracea, but rather recognized it as the eastern Himalayan-northern Burmese subspecies B. ochracea stoliczkae. It has to be noted here that all material examined by Kramer and determined by himself as B. o. stoliczkae was misidentified. Our re-examination (by FT) revealed that FMNH 131957 is Boiga multifasciata and FMNH 152584 is Boiga trigonata. Gruber in Schleich & Kästle (2002) recognized all three subspecies: B. o. ochracea from Darjeeling, Sikkim, Assam, Bhutan and Bangladesh; B. o. stoliczkae from Nepal, and B. o. walli as characterized by Smith (1943) from southern Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, but they did not provide any characteristics to distinguish between the three taxa. Therefore, there appears to be a great deal of confusion over the nomenclature and distribution of the various populations of B. ochracea, largely caused by Smith’s misinterpretation of the data and some recent authors (e.g., Das 2010; Wallach et al. 2014) largely followed Smith’s (1943) erroneous concept of this group. As a consequence of what is stated above, we consider Boiga walli to be a synonym of B. ochracea, and we elevate B. stoliczkae again to species level, distinct from B. ochracea. To summarize the current situation, Boiga ochracea should be the taxon with 19-19-15 or 13 dorsal scale rows, cream to beige color without any pattern, from NE India south and east of the Brahmaputra valley across Bangladesh to Myanmar. Boiga multomaculata should, Published as part of Köhler, Gunther, Charunrochana, Panupong Thammachoti, Mogk, Linda, Than, Ni Lar, Kurniawan, Nia, Kadafi, Ahmad Muammar, Das, Abhijit, Tillack, Frank & O'Shea, Mark, 2023, A taxonomic revision of Boiga multomaculata (Boie, 1827) and B. ochracea (Theobald, 1868), with the description of a new subspecies (Squamata, Serpentes, Colubridae), pp. 151-193 in Zootaxa 5270 (2) on pages 154-159, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5270.2.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7896950, {"references":["Gunther, A. (1868) Sixth account of new species of snakes in the British Museum. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, (4) 1, 425. https: // doi. org / 10.1080 / 00222936808695725","Uetz, P., Freed, P. & Hosek, J. (2022) The Reptile Database. Available from http: // www. reptile-database. org (accessed 6 February 2022)","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: a Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, xxvii + 1237.","Evenhuis, N. L. (2003) Publication and dating of the journals forming the Annals and Magazine of Natural History and the Journal of Natural History. Zootaxa, 385, 1 - 68. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 385.1.1","Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, including the whole of the Indo-Chinese Subregion. Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol. III. - Serpentes. Taylor & Francis, London, 583 pp.","Theobald, W. (1868 b) Catalogue of the reptiles of British Birma, embracing the provinces of Pegu, Martaban, and Tenasserim; with descriptions of new or little-know species. Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology), 10, 4 - 67. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / j. 1096 - 3642.1868. tb 02007. x","Boulenger, G. A. (1896) Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum (Natural History). Vol. III. Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), London, United Kingdom, xiv + 727.","Theobald, W. (1868 a) Catalogue of reptiles in the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Extra Number, vi + 82 pp., Appendix i - iii. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 5477","Sclater, W. L. (1891) List of snakes in the Indian Museum. Trustees of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, 79 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 8746","Das, I., Dattagupta, B. & Gayen, N. C. (1998) History and catalogue of reptile types in the collection of the Zoological Survey of India. Journal of South Asian Natural History, 3, 121 - 172.","Stoliczka, F. (1870) Observations on some Indian and Malayan Amphibia and Reptilia. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Ser. 4. 6, 105 - 109. https: // doi. org / 10.1080 / 00222937008696209","Boulenger, G. A. (1890) The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor and Francis, London, United Kingdom, xviii + 541. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 100797","Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155. https: // doi. org / 10.26515 / rzsi / v 3 / i 2 / 1909 / 163268","Annandale, N. (1909) Major Wall on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 281 - 282. https: // doi. org / 10.26515 / rzsi / v 3 / i 3 / 1909 / 163284","Cope, E. D. (1860) Catalogue of the Colubridae in the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, with notes and descriptions of new species. Part 2. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 12, 241 - 266.","Fitzinger, L. I. (1826) Neue Classification der Reptilien nach ihren Naturlichen Verwandtschaften. Nebst einer Verwandtschafts- Tafel und einem Verzeichnisse der Reptilien-Sammlung des K. K. Zoologischen Museum's zu Wien. J. G. Heubner, Wien, 66 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 4683","Chandramouli, R. S. (2022) Snake fauna of the Andaman Islands, Bay of Bengal - A review of species richness, taxonomy, distribution, natural history and conservation status. Zootaxa, 5209 (3), 301 - 331. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 5209.3.1","Smith, M. A. (1928) The status of some recently described genera and species of snakes. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1, 494 - 497. https: // doi. org / 10.1080 / 00222932808672813","Kramer, E. (1977) Zur Schlangenfauna Nepals. Review Suisse de Zoologie, 84, 721 - 761. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. part. 91420","Schleich, H. H. & Kastle, W. (Eds.) (2002) Amphibians and Reptiles of Nepal. A. R. G. Gantner Verlag, Ruggell, 1201 pp.","Das, I. (2010) A field guide to the reptiles of South-East Asia. New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd., London, 376 pp."]}

Boiga andamanensis (Wall, 1909) (Figs. 7A & B, 12A) Material studied: Two adults; ANFD uncatalogued, an adult from Mayabunder, Middle Andaman; CIARI uncatalogued, an adult from Sippighat, South Andaman (Fig. 3G). Morphology: Dorsal scales elongated, slender and smooth, in 21:21:15 rows; mid dorsal row distinctly enlarged, hexagonal; ventrals 259–262; preventral 1; subcaudals 102–124, divided; preocular 1; postoculars 2; anal single; supralabials 8 (3–5 entering orbit); infralabials 10–11 (1–6 contacting genials); temporals 3+2, loreal 1. A colour polymorphic species; three distinct colour morphs observed: ashy green, brown and bright red, the former two being frequent as adults and juveniles being reddish. Interior of mouth pink. Distribution: A nocturnal species found throughout the Andaman Archipelago. Seven individuals were recorded from South Andaman, Long Island, Havelock and Middle Andaman Islands. Found in primary evergreen and secondary forests. Rather uncommon in human habitations. Found in low-lying shrubs and bushes. Remarks: B. andamanensis was redescribed recently by Ganesh et al. (2020) as a part of the revision of the B. ceylonensis group. Earlier reports of Boiga ochracea walli from the Andaman Islands (Smith, 1940; Whitaker and Captain, 2004) need a proper reassessment and are likely to be erroneous; possibly based on the red colour variants of B. andamanensis. Status: Uncommon, endemic to the Andaman archipelago., Published as part of Chandramouli, S. R., 2022, Snake fauna of the Andaman Islands, Bay of Bengal-A review of species richness taxonomy, distribution, natural history and conservation status, pp. 301-331 in Zootaxa 5209 (3) on page 308, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5209.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7329609, {"references":["Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155. https: // doi. org / 10.26515 / rzsi / v 3 / i 2 / 1909 / 163268","Ganesh, S. R., Achyutan, N. S., Chandramouli S. R. & Vogel, G. (2020) Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): re-examination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key. Zootaxa, 4779 (3), 301 - 322. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 4779.3.1","Smith, M. A. (1940) The herpetology of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London, 3, 150 - 158. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / j. 1095 - 8312.1941. tb 00277. x","Whitaker, R. & Captain, A. (2004) Snakes of India - the field guide. Draco Books, Chennai, 500 pp."]}

Boiga cyanea (Duméril, Bibron, and Duméril, 1854) (Fig. 12A) Material studied: One adult, ZSI/ANRC/T/13497, an adult from Narcondam (Fig. 4F). Morphology: Dorsal scales in 22:21:15 rows, vertebrals enlarged; ventrals 251; subcaudals 126, divided; anal single; preoculars 2; postoculars 2; supralabials 8 (3–5 entering orbit); infralabials 11; temporals 2+3; loreal 1. Bright grassy green dorsally and ventrally with a black inter-scalar skin; interior of mouth black. Distribution: Restricted to Narcondam Island; widespread outside in the Southeast Asian mainland. A nocturnal species, seen only occasionally in the isolated volcanic island of Narcondam. Not found in islands of the Main Andaman chain. Found in low-lying bushes and shrubs. Two individuals, a live and a dead one were reported recently for the first time from the Andaman Archipelago. Also occurs in the continental parts of Southeast Asia including Northeast India (Eastern Himalayas), Myanmar and further eastwards in Indochina (Whitaker and Captain, 2008). Remarks: Reported for the first time from Narcondam Island by Gokulakrishnan et al. (2021). The earlier report of B. cyanea from Great Nicobar Island within the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago was shown to be erroneous and represent B. wallachi (see Chandramouli, 2017). Status: Rare., Published as part of Chandramouli, S. R., 2022, Snake fauna of the Andaman Islands, Bay of Bengal-A review of species richness taxonomy, distribution, natural history and conservation status, pp. 301-331 in Zootaxa 5209 (3) on page 308, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5209.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7329609, {"references":["Whitaker, R. & Captain, A. (2008) Snakes of India - the field guide. Draco Books, Chennai, 385 pp.","Gokulakrishnan, G., Das, A. K., Sivaperuman, C. & Chandramouli, S. R. (2021) First Record of the Green Catsnake, Boiga cyanea (Dumeril, Bibron, and Dumeril 1854) (Reptilia: Colubridae), from Narcondam Island, India. Reptiles & Amphibians, 28 (2), 262 - 263. https: // doi. org / 10.17161 / randa. v 28 i 2.15537","Chandramouli, S. R. (2017) A critical appraisal of the record of the Green Cat Snake, Boiga cyanea, from Great Nicobar Island and its deletion from the Nicobar Islands faunal list. Sauria, 39 (3), 47 - 50."]}

The Eastern cat snake Boiga gocool (Gray, 1835) was recorded for the first time in the state of Tripura. The mildly venomous snake was documented by the authors in an opportunistic survey on 12 July 2020 near the Khowai river bridge, Khowai district, Tripura (24.064N & 91.596E; 129m). This new record will help in updating the status of the herpetofauna of Tripura, India.

We reported the first record of a colubrid snake, Boiga siamensis, from China based on a female specimen collected in the tropical forest at Yingjiang county, near the China-Myanmar border. Boiga siamensis represents the fifth species of the genus in China. This species can be distinguished from congeners by a combination of morphological characters as stated in the original description. We further described morphological characters of the Chinese specimen in details and provided additional natural history data based on our observation. Lastly, we reconstructed the mitochondrial gene tree of all the species of Boiga from China using the cytochrome b gene fragment and suggested that B. siamensis is the sister taxon of B. guangxiensis with an uncorrected pairwise distance of 14.6%.

We report first country record of Boiga quincunciata (Wall, 1908) (Squamata: Colubridae) from Bhutan. This addition increases the ophidian fauna of Bhutan to 70 species and adds the seventh species of snake within the genus Boiga.

Boiga beddomei (Wall, 1909) (Fig. 1���2; Table 1) Suggested common name: Beddome���s cat snake. Boiga beddomei (non Wall 1921)��� Ganesh et al. 2020 Boiga beddomei (non Taylor 1950)��� Ganesh et al. 2020 Boiga beddomei (non Das & De���Silva 2005)��� Ganesh et al. 2020 Boiga beddomei (non Manamendra-Arachchi & Pethiyagoda 2007)��� Ganesh et al. 2020 Boiga beddomei ��� Vyas & Desai 2010; Patel et al. 2018 Additional specimens examined. (n=2). INDIA. CESS 417 & CESS 418 from Mhadei WLS, Goa, BNHS 1793 from Talegoun Nabhade, Pune, BNHS 1796 from Khandala, Pune. Complementary Diagnosis. Boiga beddomei is phylogenetically allied to a clade (node support 100%) consisting of B. nuchalis, B. ceylonensis of Sri Lanka and B. whitakeri sp. nov.; exhibiting 7.6���8.5, 8.9���9.3, 13.3���13.5% divergence at cyt b with its sister species B. nuchalis and B. whitakeri sp. nov. and B. ceylonensis respectively; and a maximum intraspecific divergence of 2.5%. Comments. The lectotypification by Ganesh et al. (2020) and the different phylogenetic placements revealed in the present study (see Fig. 1) implies that B. beddomei is a species endemic to the Northern Western Ghats of India. Thus, the Sri Lankan population previously attributed to ��� B. beddomei ��� (sic) represented by the Sri Lankan sequence (fide Pyron et al. 2013) becomes obsolete as it is herein referred to as Boiga cf. ranawanei (also see Samarawickrama et al. 2005). The phylogenetic position of this Western Ghats population further corroborates the appropriate lectotype designation by Ganesh et al. (2020) that restricts B. beddomei as a species placed within the B. ceylonensis clade, clustering with B. ceylonensis and B. nuchalis ���the two species Wall (1909) had originally associated B. beddomei with. Whereas the published sequence (i.e. B. cf. ranawanei) clusters with species not present in this clade (B. flaviviridis and B. thackerayi). Wallach et al. (2014) stated that the type locality is ���restricted to Sri Lanka fide Taylor (1950 b:576)���, citing ���Taylor, E.H. (1950b). A brief review of Ceylonese snakes. University of Kansas Science Bulletin 33(14), 519���603, 3 figs., pls. 12���25.��� Our perusal of Taylor���s original publication reveals its heading to be ���Snakes of Ceylon ���, the journal, issue and page numbers being the same as those mentioned in Wallach et al. (2014). Taylor only provided notes on ��� B. beddomei ��� based on his new collections (EHT-HMS 30674���75 from 12 miles north of Trincomalee), but did not discuss its taxonomic history. The only place Taylor mentions the type locality is when he gives in chresonymy list ���type locality: Ceylon ��� citing Wall (1909). This again is not correct, as Wall (1909) also had the specimen from Matheran (the lectotype after Ganesh et al. 2020). Wall (1909) was mistaken that R.H. Beddome collected the types whereas they were in fact procured by Major Barrett (see Boulenger, 1896). Wall���s subsequent treatments of B. beddomei also included data from both Indian and Sri Lankan populations (Wall 1919, 1921). Wallach et al. (2014) themselves list the type localities correctly, including Matheran of India. Thus, the supposed terra typica restricta attributed to Taylor (1950) by Wallach et al. (2014) is incorrect., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Mallik, Ashok Kumar, Achyuthan, N. S., Shanker, Kartik & Vogel, Gernot, 2021, A new species of Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the Southern Western Ghats of India with a molecular phylogeny and expanded characterisation of related species, pp. 449-468 in Zootaxa 4981 (3) on page 460, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4981.3.2, http://zenodo.org/record/4921065, {"references":["Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155.","Wall, F. (1921) Ophidia Taprobanica or the Snakes of Ceylon. Colombo Museum. H. R. Cottle, Govt. Printer, Colombo, xxii + 581 pp.","Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, G. (2020) Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key. Zootaxa, 4779 (3), 301 - 332.","Taylor, E. H. (1950) The Snakes of Ceylon. University of Kansas Science Bulletin, 33 (14), 519 - 603.","Manamendra-Arachchi, K. & Pethiyagoda, R. (2007) Boiga rawanawei, a junior synonym of Boiga beddomei. Zeylanica, 7 (1), 123 - 124.","Vyas, R. & Desai, S. R. (2010) The Records of Beddome's Cat Snakes (Boiga beddomei) from Purna Wildlife Sanctuary, Gujarat State, India. Reptile Rap, 10, 10 - 13.","Patel, H., Vyas, R., Naik, V., Dudhatra, B. & Tank, S. K. (2018) Herpetofauna of the Northern Western Ghats of Gujarat, India. Zoology and Ecology, 28 (3), 213 - 223. https: // doi. org / 10.1080 / 21658005.2018.1499237","Pyron, R. A., Kandambi, H. D., Hendry, C. R., Pushpamal, V., Burbrink, F. T. & Somaweera, R. (2013) Genus-level phylogeny of snakes reveals the origins of species richness in Sri Lanka. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 66 (3), 969 - 978.","Samarawickrama, V. A. M. P. K., Samarawickrama, V. A. P., Wijesena, N. M. & Orlov, N. L. (2005) A new species of genus Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae: Colubrinae) from Sri Lanka. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 12 (3), 213 - 222.","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. CRC Press, 1237 pp.","Boulenger, G. A. (1896) Catalogue of the snakes in the British Museum, Vol. iii, containing the Colubridae (Ophisthoglyphae and Proteroglyphae), Amblyocephalidae and Viperidae. Taylor & Francis, London, xiv + 727 pp.","Wall, F. (1919) Notes on a collection of snakes made in the Nilgiri hills and the adjacent Wayanad. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 26, 552 - 584."]}

Boiga whitakeri sp. nov. (Fig. 1–5; Table 1) Material examined. Holotype. BNHS 3597 (ex. CESS 255) an adult male collected by SP & MP in 2011; Paratype. BNHS 1863 collected by K.G. Adiyodi, from Pullompara, Ernakulam dt., Kerala, in June 1961. Type locality. Devar Malai (9.173N, 77.261E; 1020 m asl), Tirunelveli dt., Tamil Nadu, in Periyar Plateau of the Southern Western Ghats. Etymology. Patronym named in genitive singular case honoring Romulus Whitaker, for his pioneering and substantial efforts to study and conserve Indian reptiles, especially snakes. Suggested common name: Whitaker’s cat snake. Diagnosis. A species of Boiga occurring in the Southern Western Ghats, having 19 midbody scale rows; ventrals 235–243; subcaudals 88–98; a creamy brown dorsum with orange transverse streaks; crown with faint markings; ventrolateral pattern composed of small brown dots; phylogenetically delineated as a species, sister to B. ceylonensis of Sri Lanka (node support 98%), sufficiently divergent (5.1% at cyt b, 0.9% at 16s, 4.2% at ND4) from and closely allied to the allopatric B. ceylonensis than to any other sampled Indian or Sri Lankan congeners. Comparisons. Boiga whitakeri sp. nov. can be distinguished from related and sympatric congeners as follows: 19 midbody dorsal scale rows (vs. 21–23 in B. nuchalis, B. dightoni); a dorsal color that is creamy yellow with orange streaks vs. (greyish brown body with dark brown bars in B. ceylonensis; yellowish-brown dorsal color with black patterns in B. thackerayi; green or greenish in B. flaviviridis; yellowish ground color with black bands in B. beddomei); subcaudals 110 in B. beddomei, B. flaviviridis); crown with faint brown markings (vs. crown markings absent or obscure in B. beddomei; crown with prominent black markings in B. ceylonensis, B. thackerayi); ventrolateral region with small brown dots (vs. unpatterned in B. flaviviridis; large alternating white and black blotches in B. thackerayi, B. barnesii); head, neck and body cream-colored with orange streaks throughout (vs. head and neck yellowish-brown, interscalar skin yellowish-brown with distinct black crossbars and markings in B. thackerayi, body pale brownish, with blackish-brown crossbars and pattern in B. ceylonensis). Description of the holotype. Holotype coiled, hemipenis everted, ventral region of the mid body incised for tissue.A medium-sized snake measuring 645 mm total length, snout-vent length: 500 mm, tail length: 145 mm, relative tail size 22.4%; vertical eye diameter: 3.3 mm, horizontal eye diameter: 3.7 mm; head length: 16.4 mm; eye to nostril distance: 2.6 mm; eye to lip distance: 1 mm; body with slender habitus, thin neck 3.88 mm at nape, wide head 8.44 mm at the angle of the jaw; head relatively longer with HL 19.54 mm, HW/HL ratio 41.9%; tail long (22.4%); dorsal scale rows 19:19:17; rostral visible from above; preocular 1, subequal to loreal; postoculars 2 on both sides; loreal 1 on both sides; supralabials 8/8, with 3 rd, 4 th and 5 th supralabials touching eye on both sides, 6 th supralabial being the largest; infralabials 11/12, 1–3 touching the first genials and 4–6 touching the second genials; temporals 10 on both sides; prefrontal in contact with the preocular; a pair of prefrontals that are in contact with the nasals, prefrontal length 2.2mm; sub-triangular frontal of length 4.3 mm; nasal divided, posterior part of the nasal in contact with the prefrontal and the first and second supralabial and the loreal, preventrals 2; ventrals 235, angulate laterally; anal scale entire; subcaudals 98 pairs. Dorsal color cream to light brown (in life), rather uniform throughout the dorsum; except in parts of labials and coastal scales that were whitish; dorsum with 122 (83 on body, 39 on tail) orange cross bars; cross bars covering 2–4 scales in size, extending on either side up to 3–4 scale rows across; interspaces often with sparse streaks; a distinct dark brown postocular stripe up to the jaw angle; labials, chin and venter light cream to dirty white. The specimen in preservative faded into a light grey dorsally with slightly darker markings and cross bars on the body. The dark nuchal and head markings faded; dirty white gular region and ventrum light yellow finely dotted with brown spots; head with dark markings and a dark brown distinct temporal streak extending from behind the oculars till the angle of the jaw. Holotype somewhat impacted by suboptimal preservation. Variation shown by the paratype. Agreeing well with the holotype and showing the following intraspecific variations: snout to vent length: up to 677 mm, with tail length up to 154 mm; head length: 22 mm; head width: 14 mm; eye diameter: 4.7 mm; inter-orbital distance: 11.4 mm; anterior scale rows: 18; posterior scale rows: 15; ventrals 243; subcaudals 88; preventrals 3; supralabials 9 (4–6 touch eye); infralabials 12–13 (1–6 touch genials); dorsum with much bolder series of cross bars; a distinct horizontal cross bar on occiput; venter with small brown spots. Paratype in good condition retaining the colour pattern and habitus, without any preservation artifact. Distribution and Natural History. The type specimen was collected in Devar Malai range or Vairavankulam Reserve Forests / Suttivezhi Vayal (Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu State) in the far south of Periyar plateau in the Southern Western Ghats. Devar Malai is perhaps the most inaccessible, little-known and under-surveyed hill range in the Western Ghats, owing to its remoteness, lack of roads and rugged terrain. Situated just south of Sivagiri hills and drained by the Karuppanadhi river, Devar Malai continues westwards as the Aruvappulam hills in Kerala and drops steeply eastwards to the plains at Puliyangudi. Historically, Devar Malai has been mentioned in literature as Ayen/Achen Koil hills or Chokkampatty Hills by Col. R.H. Beddome. The habitat at the type locality consists of evergreen rainforests (Bourdillon, 1908). Beddome (1877) described these areas as “dense moist forest above the Ayen-Coil pass (Travancore), at about 2500 feet elevation”. Very little is known about the natural history of the new species, except that it is nocturnal and arboreal, like other Boiga spp. The paratype is labeled as from “Eranakulam, Pullompara”. While Eranakulam is evidently the provincial name, “Pullompara” appears to be an anglicized word that probably refers to forests near Pulluvazhy Para (10.086N, 76.511E) abutting the Thattekad or Kothamangalam Forest (10.103N, 76.701E). Other interpretations viz. Pullampara (Trivandram) or Pulayampara (Palghat) or Pollompara (Kannur) are untenable and unassociated with the erstwhile Ernakulam Province. The collector of the paratype in 1963, “K.G. Adiyodi”, refers to Dr. Kenoth Govindan Adiyodi (1938–2001), a Zoology Professor who worked at various institutions in Kerala (Anilkumar et al. 2010). In June 2008, one of us (NSA) recorded a live Boiga having 19 midbody scale rows and lacking white ventrolateral blotches, from Courtallam (8.929N, 77.237E; 630 m asl), Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, just 30 ariline km south off the type locality. The snake was seen coiled and resting inside a tree hole during daytime, in hilly evergreen forest tracts. Thus, at the type locality and elsewhere within its known distribution range, the new species is sympatric with B. nuchalis and B. thackerayi judging by our previous excursions in Devar Malai and nearby ranges (NSA, SRG pers. obs.). Presumably nocturnal and arboreal.

Boiga nuchalis (G��nther, 1875) (Fig. 1���2; Table 1) Suggested common name: Collared cat snake. Additional specimens examined. (n=12). INDIA. CESS270 collected by AKM from Thadiyendamol (12.229N 75.623E; 1336 m asl), Kodagu dt., Karnataka; CESS310 collected by CM from Iruppu falls (11.969N 75.985E; 856 m asl), Kodagu dt., Karnataka; CESS315 collected by CM from Potachipara (12.077N 75.805E; 190 m asl), Bramagiri, Kodagu dt., Karnataka; CESS192 collected by IA & AD in 2011 from Kolli Hills (11.295N 78.377E; 1100 m asl), Namakkal dt., Tamil Nadu (Eastern Ghats); CESS081 collected by AKM in 2010 from Meppadi (11.589N 76.099E; 757 m asl), Kalpetta, Waynad dt., Kerala; CESS085 collected by SP & MP in 2010 from Kalpetta (11.588N 76.100E; 775 m asl), Waynad dt., Kerala; CESS094 collected by SP & MP in 2010 from Siruvani (10.987N 76.622E; 789 m asl), Palghat dt., Kerala; CESS165 collected by SP & MP in 2010 from Vazhachal (10.303N 76.593E; 233 m asl), Idukki dt., Kerala; CSPT /S-85 Madurai dt., Tamil Nadu; SACON /VR-73a���b two from Meghamalai; SACON /VR-73c one from Anamalai; SACON /VR-73d one from Ooty. Complementary Diagnosis. Boiga nuchalis is phylogenetically sister (node support 100%) to a clade consisting of B. ceylonensis and B. whitakeri sp. nov. that in-turn cluster with high support (97%). Boiga nuchalis is 5.9���6.5 % divergent from B. ceylonensis and 5.1���5.9% from B. whitakeri sp. nov. at cyt b. Comments. Our new genetic results (see Fig. 1) support the earlier notion of Ganesh et al. (2020) that the populations in the Western Ghats and the disjunct ones occurring in the Southern Eastern Ghats are all conspecific and represent a single widespread species. The highest intraspecific divergence documented in this species is 2.6%, between samples from Coorg and Wayanad, and 1.4% divergence between Kolli Hills and Coorg at cyt b., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Mallik, Ashok Kumar, Achyuthan, N. S., Shanker, Kartik & Vogel, Gernot, 2021, A new species of Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the Southern Western Ghats of India with a molecular phylogeny and expanded characterisation of related species, pp. 449-468 in Zootaxa 4981 (3) on page 461, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4981.3.2, http://zenodo.org/record/4921065, {"references":["Gunther, A. C. L. G. (1875) Second report on collections of Indian Reptiles obtained by the British Museum. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1875, 224 - 234.","Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, G. (2020) Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key. Zootaxa, 4779 (3), 301 - 332."]}

Updated key to the species of the Boiga ceylonensis complex (modified from Ganesh et al. 2020) 1a. Midbody scale rows 17 or 19............................................................................ 2 1b. Midbody scale rows 21 or 23............................................................................ 7 2a. Dorsum greenish, venter uniform lemon yellow................................................... B. flaviviridis 2b. Dorsum brownish, venter grey, powdered with brown dots..................................................... 3 3a. Crown not marked; subcaudals> 100 pairs........................................................ B. beddomei 3b. Crown marked with blackish-brown blotches; subcaudals B. whitakeri sp. nov. 5b. Crown markings on parietals evident and dark; bands distinctly black, thicker and complete................ B. ceylonensis 6a. Preocular 1; 17 or 19 dorsal rows dorsum barred................................................... B. thackerayi 6b. Preoculars 3; 19 dorsal rows, dorsum blotched...................................................... B. barnesii 7a. Ventral and ventrolateral region unpatterned................................................... B. andamanensis 7b. Ventral and ventrolateral region with patterns............................................................... 8 8a. Temporals subequal to coastal body scales; dorsum uniform........................................... B. dightoni 8b. Temporals much larger than coastal body scales; dorsum barred........................................ B. nuchalis, Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Mallik, Ashok Kumar, Achyuthan, N. S., Shanker, Kartik & Vogel, Gernot, 2021, A new species of Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the Southern Western Ghats of India with a molecular phylogeny and expanded characterisation of related species, pp. 449-468 in Zootaxa 4981 (3) on page 463, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4981.3.2, http://zenodo.org/record/4921065, {"references":["Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, G. (2020) Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key. Zootaxa, 4779 (3), 301 - 332."]}

Boiga thackerayi Giri, Deepak, Captain, Pawar & Tillack, 2019 (Fig. 1���2, 6; Table 1) Suggested common name: Thackeray���s cat snake. Boiga ceylonensis (non Dipsadomorphus ceylonensis G��nther, 1858)��� Boulenger 1896 part; Wall 1909 part; Wall 1919; Inger et al. 1984 part; Malhotra & Davis 1991 part; Das 2002 part; Whitaker & Captain 2004 part; Hutton & David 2009 part; Chandramouli & Ganesh 2010 part Boiga ceylonensis dakhunensis (non Deraniyagala, 1955)��� Sharma 2004; Wallach et al. 2014 Boiga cf. thackerayi ��� Ganesh et al. (2020) Specimens examined. (n=33). INDIA. Tamil Nadu: MNHN 1946.67 Kodikanel; BMNH 74.4.29.66 Anamallais; CAS 13091 Puthuthotam, Anamallais; BMNH 1955.1.3.45 High Wavy mountains 3000-5000 ft; BMNH 1955.1.3.42 High Wavys; CAS 13092 Valparai, Anamalais; BNHS 1840 a Paralai, Valparai; CSPT /S-39 Madurai dt.,; SACON / VR-75a one from Meghamalai, SACON /VR-75b one from Anamalai; CESS254 collected by SP in 2011 from Valparai (10.394N 76.992E; 1287 m asl), Tiruppur dt.,; CESS292 collected by SP in 2011 from Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (8.605N 77.224E; 1052 m asl), Tirunelveli dt.; Kerala: NMW 19937:1���2 Malabar; FMNH 217702 Trivandrum district;. BNHS 1841 a Nelliampathy, Palghat District; BNHS 1844 a & b Nelliampathy, Palghat; FMNH 217701 Trivandrum District; USNM 42469 Cochin hills,; BNHS 1862 Bariami estate, Fairfeild, Travancore; CESS011 collected by AKM in 2009 from Vellimala (9.532N 77.371E; 1380 m asl), Periyar Plateau, Idukki dt.,; CESS093 collected by SP & MP in 2010 from Sirivani (10.945N 76.645E; 1522 m asl), Palghat dt.,; CESS 139 collected by SP & MP in 2010 from Silent Valley (11.111N 76.429E; 950 m asl), Palghat dt.,; CESS 140 collected by SP & MP in 2010 from Silent Valley (11.177N 76.414E; 1140 m asl), Palghat dt.,; CESS 107 collected by SP & MP in 2010 from Chemunji (8.678N 77.192E; 1330 m asl), Peppara, Kollam dt.,; Karnataka: CESS534 collected by AKM in 2012 from Agumbe, Karnataka (13.576N 75.106E). Complementary Diagnosis. Boiga thackerayi is phylogenetically sister to (node support 100%) a clade containing B. cf. ranawanei and B. flaviviridis. From B. flaviviridis, it is 11.4���12.6% divergent; and from B. cf. ranawanei of Sri Lanka, it is 10.5���11.1% divergent at cyt b. The highest intraspecific divergence was 3.6%, between two samples from Coorg and Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Hills situated on the Central and Southern Western Ghats respectively. Description and variation. A medium-sized snake with a snout-vent length: 261���832 mm, tail length: 76���275 mm, relative tail size 21.8���23.5%; with slender habitus, thin neck, wide head; long tail; anterior dorsal scale rows 17���20 (17, 18 and 20 anterior dorsal scale rows in one, two and one specimens respectively out of 31 specimens examined); midbody scale rows 19; posterior scale rows 13���15 (13 in 2 out of 20 cases, 14 in 1 out of 31 cases); rostral visible from above; preocular 1, subequal to loreal; postoculars 2; loreal 1; supralabials 8/9, with 3 rd ���5 th / 4 th ���6 th ones touching eye; infralabials 11/12, with 1���5 touching genials; temporals 10���14; preventral 1; ventrals 207���239, angulate laterally; anal scale 1; subcaudals 86���109 pairs. Dorsal color brownish-grey, patterned with blackish brown cross bars, 55���76 on body, 19���29 on tail; cross bars covering 2���4 scales in size, extending either sides up to 3���4 scale rows across; interspaces often with sparse dark dots; distinct circular markings on top of head, on frontal, parietals, temporal and occipital parts; a distinct postocular stripe up to the jaw angle; labials, chin and venter ashy brown, finely spotted with darker hue; venter bordered along both sides by a series of large adjacent white and black blotches, alternating at an interval of every 3���4 ventrals. Distribution and natural history: This species is endemic to the Western Ghats. It occurs in wet tropical evergreen forests. Its distribution covers most of the ranges including Agasthyamalai (Inger et al. 1984), Kottamalai, Meghamalai (Chandramouli & Ganesh 2010; Malhotra & Davis 1991), Anaimalai (Hutton & David 2009), Nilgiris, Wayanad (Wall 1919), Malnad, Coorg, Kudremukh, Castle Rock (Ganesh et al. 2013), on to its type locality Koyna (Giri et al. 2019). During fieldwork we recorded this species in almost all hill complexes of the Western Ghats. This species is nocturnal and live individuals were sighted in the field by us at night (19:30 h to 24:00 h). On one occasion, a resting adult female was sighted tucked underneath the peeling bark of a tree at 14:00 h. It is an arboreal species, with live snakes sighted almost always on the branches and twigs of vegetation, with perching heights ranging from 0.5 m to up to over 3 m. This species has been sighted both in pristine forests (evergreen rainforests, montane forests) as well as secondary forests and even amidst tea gardens. Its distribution ranges in elevation from 500���1500 m asl. On its juveniles from Nilgiri-Waynad, Wall (1919) stated that young ones measuring 450 mm length were sighted during August-September. Comments. Originally described based on three specimens from a single locality in the Northern Western Ghats (Giri et al. 2019). Our study has expanded the morphological and geographical boundary of this species, by examining a ten-fold higher number of specimens (n=33) from sites spanning over 1300 km, across the entire Western Ghats. We also depict its phylogenetic placement in a tree for the first time; in addition to genetic distances (also see Giri et al. 2019)., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Mallik, Ashok Kumar, Achyuthan, N. S., Shanker, Kartik & Vogel, Gernot, 2021, A new species of Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the Southern Western Ghats of India with a molecular phylogeny and expanded characterisation of related species, pp. 449-468 in Zootaxa 4981 (3) on pages 458-459, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4981.3.2, http://zenodo.org/record/4921065, {"references":["Giri, V. B., Deepak, V., Captain, A., Pawar, S. & Tillack, F. (2019) A new species of Boiga Fitzinger, 1826 (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the northern Western Ghats of India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 116, 1 - 11.","Gunther, A. C. L. G. (1858) Catalogue of Colubrine snakes of the British Museum. Printed by the order of the Trustees of the British Museum, London, XVI + 281 pp.","Boulenger, G. A. (1896) Catalogue of the snakes in the British Museum, Vol. iii, containing the Colubridae (Ophisthoglyphae and Proteroglyphae), Amblyocephalidae and Viperidae. Taylor & Francis, London, xiv + 727 pp.","Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155.","Wall, F. (1919) Notes on a collection of snakes made in the Nilgiri hills and the adjacent Wayanad. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 26, 552 - 584.","Inger, R. F., Shaffer, H. B., Koshy, M. & Ramesh, B. (1984) A report on a collection of amphibians and reptiles from the Ponmudi, Kerala, South India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 81 (3), 551 - 570.","Malhotra, A. & Davis, K. (1991) A report on a herpetological survey of the Srivilliputtur Reserve Forest, Tamil Nadu. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 88 (2), 157 - 166.","Das, I. (2002) A photographic guide to snakes and other reptiles of India. New Holland Publisher, London, 144 pp.","Whitaker, R. & Captain, A. (2004) Snakes of India - the field guide. Draco Books, Chennai ,, 500 pp.","Hutton, A. F. & David, P. (2009) Notes on a collection of snakes from south India, with emphasis on the snake fauna of the Megamalai Hills (High Wavy Mountains). Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 105 (3), 299 - 316.","Sharma, R. C. (2004) Handbook Indian Snakes. Akhil Books, New Delhi, 292 pp.","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. CRC Press, 1237 pp.","Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, G. (2020) Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key. Zootaxa, 4779 (3), 301 - 332."]}

Boiga flaviviridis Vogel & Ganesh, 2013 (Fig. 1���2; Table 1) Suggested common name: Yellow-green cat snake. Boiga beddomei (non Wall, 1909)���Chaitanya et al. 2019 Boiga cf. flaviviridis ��� Giri et al. 2019 Additional specimens examined. (n=1). INDIA. CESS 529, an adult female from Horsley Hills, Chittoor dt., Andhra Pradesh, Eastern Ghats. Complementary Diagnosis. Boiga flaviviridis is phylogenetically sister (node support 100%) to the Sri Lankan Boiga cf. ranawanei. These two taxa are closely related to B. thackerayi (node support 100%). Boiga flaviviridis is 9.1���9.5% genetically divergent from its sister species B. cf. ranawanei and has 2.2% intraspecific divergence between specimens from Horsley hills and Meghamalai at cyt b. Comments. Boiga flaviviridis is a poorly known species for which phylogenetic data of well-identified vouchers are provided herein for the first time. The Giri et al. (2019) sequence represented as B. cf. flaviviridis is from leeward slopes of Western Ghats, a region not previously known to harbor this species (see Vogel & Ganesh, 2013). The present sequence from Horsley Hills is close to the referred material���s locality: Kaigal, both situated in Chittoor hills of the Eastern Ghats., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Mallik, Ashok Kumar, Achyuthan, N. S., Shanker, Kartik & Vogel, Gernot, 2021, A new species of Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the Southern Western Ghats of India with a molecular phylogeny and expanded characterisation of related species, pp. 449-468 in Zootaxa 4981 (3) on page 460, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4981.3.2, http://zenodo.org/record/4921065, {"references":["Vogel, G. & Ganesh, S. R. (2013) A new species of cat snake (Reptilia: Serpentes: Colubridae: Boiga) from dry forests of eastern Peninsular India. Zootaxa, 3637 (2), 158 - 168.","Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155.","Giri, V. B., Deepak, V., Captain, A., Pawar, S. & Tillack, F. (2019) A new species of Boiga Fitzinger, 1826 (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the northern Western Ghats of India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 116, 1 - 11."]}

We conducted a molecular phylogenetic study on the Boiga ceylonensis group from the Western Ghats of India, building on a recent morphology-based study. Our analysis supports previous work in elucidating the phylogenetic position of B. nuchalis and B. beddomei s. str. (of Matheran, Western Ghats) as clustering closely with B. ceylonensis, while B. flaviviridis clustered with the Sri Lankan taxon close to B. ranawanei. Additionally, our phylogenetic study revealed the presence of an undescribed taxon in the Southern Western Ghats, more closely related to B. ceylonensis than to any other sampled taxon, including sympatric congeners. This new taxon is described here as a new species Boiga whitakeri sp. nov. from the Devar Malai–Anaimalai hill complex. Based on molecular and morphometric studies, we expand the description of the recently described B. thackerayi as inhabiting almost the entire stretch of the Western Ghats. We also complement the diagnoses of B. nuchalis and B. flaviviridis, and determine the phylogenetic position of B. thackerayi with molecular data.

Boiga melanota (Boulenger, 1896) Figure 6A Materials examined. MALAYSIA – Kedah • Batu Hampar Recreational Forest; 05.1966°N, 100.5827°E; 40 m a.s.l.; 23.IX.2018; Evan S. H. Quah, Hong Zijia obs.; USMHC 2475 • same locality; 8.X.2018; Evan S. H. Quah, Hong Zijia leg.; 1 ♂, USMHC 2482. Identification and natural history. One adult male (SVL 1015 mm, TL 259 mm) matched Tweedie’s (1983) and Weinell et al.’s (2020) diagnosis in having a large, robust and laterally compressed body; head distinct from neck; short and rounded snout; single preocular; two postoculars; loreal present; eight supralabials, where the 3rd to 5th touches the eye; 11–12 infralabials; large eye; vertical pupil; smooth dorsals; 21 midbody scale rows; 202–253 ventrals; 89–118 paired subcaudals; anal scale entire; black dorsum with 21–46 yellow bands on body which do not meet mid-dorsally; labials and gular region yellow and venter grey. The specimen was found crawling on the ground along trail at night. Another specimen was observed crawling through low vegetation along stream bank at night on 23 September 2018 and a tail clipping was taken (USMHC 2475)., Published as part of Zijia, Hong, Anuar, Shahrul, Grismer, L. Lee & Quah, Evan S. H., 2021, Preliminary report on the herpetofaunal diversity of Batu Hampar Recreational Forest, Kedah, Malaysia, pp. 791-814 in Check List 17 (3) on page 801, DOI: 10.15560/17.3.791, {"references":["Boulenger GA (1896) Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum (Natural History) (Vol. 3). Printed by order of the Trustees, London, 727 pp.","Tweedie MWF (1983) The snakes of Malaya. Singapore National Printers, Singapore, 167 pp."]}

The genus Toxicodryas, historically included with the renowned Australasian cat-eyed snakes of the colubrid genus Boiga, currently includes two widespread species (T. blandingii and T. pulverulenta) in western, central, and eastern Africa. We leverage findings from a recent phylogenomic and historical demographic analysis of this genus (based on 2848–4471 Rad-seq loci from across the genome), with robust sampling from throughout the ranges of both species, to define two additional taxonomic units, with species boundaries corresponding to river barriers. Additional morphometric data from scores of examined museum specimens and literature records bolster the recognition of these two new cryptic species. We hypothesize that T. blandingii occurs west of the confluence of the Congo and Ubangi rivers, whereas a cryptic new species that is found east of this biogeographic barrier has significantly higher numbers of ventral scale counts in both sexes, additional significant differences in several scale counts, and lower venom toxicity. Toxicodryas pulverulenta occurs west of the Niger Delta in West Africa, whereas a cryptic new species that is found east of this biogeographic barrier has significantly higher numbers of subcaudal scale counts in both sexes. A review of published information regarding morphological variation, ecology, natural history, habitat, and venom is summarized for these four Toxicodryas species.

Boiga andamanensis (Wall, 1909) (Tables 3���4; Fig. 8, 9F) Dipsadomorphus andamanensis Wall, 1909 Dipsas andamanesnsis ��� Das et al. (1998) (sic) Boiga andamanensis ��� Smith 1943 Taxonomic history. This species was originally described as Dipsadomorphus andamanensis based on a series of six syntypes, originating from the Andaman Islands, deposited at the Indian Museum, Calcutta, Bengal (now, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata). As in the case of B. beddomei, Wall (1909) described this species whilst revising the B. ceylonensis group. However, this species has not been a subject of taxonomic confusion ever since (but see Deraniyagala, 1955), probably because of its allopatric distribution. Specimens examined. India. Andaman Islands. Syntypes: ZSI 15189 (an adult male), ZSI 7928���7930, ZSI 8641, ZSI 15142 (unsexed juveniles) all from the Andamans. Other specimens: Male (n=1) ANFD unreg. Female (n=1) CIARI unreg. from Andaman Islands, India. Etymology. Toponym, named after its distribution in the Andaman Islands, Bay of Bengal. Diagnosis. A species of Boiga endemic to the Andaman Islands of the Bay of Bengal, India, characterized by: 21 scale rows at midbody (vs. 19 in B. ceylonensis, B. thackerayi, B. barnesii, B. beddomei and B. flaviviridis; up to 23 in B. nuchalis, B. dightoni); reddish/brownish to pale greenish dorsum (vs. yellowish-brown in B. thackerayi; always brownish in B. beddomei, B. ceylonensis, B. dightoni, B. nuchalis and B. barnesii; always greenish in B. flaviviridis); preocular 1 (vs. 3 in B. barnesii); ventral and ventro-lateral region completely lacking pattern (vs. with white and black adjacent blotches in B. barnesii, B. thackerayi; spotted in B. beddomei, B. ceylonensis, B. nuchalis, B. dightoni). Redescription of the largest syntype (ZSI 15189). An adult male measuring 1028 mm total length, with an SVL of 795 mm and tail length of 233 mm. Overall habitus slender, mandible slightly damaged on both the sides; a small lateral compression and loss of tissues at midbody. Head large and considerably wider than the thin neck; Scalerows 21:21:17; vertebrals relatively enlarged; rostral not visible from above; internasals shorter than preforntals; parietals much broader and longer than other cephalic scales; supraoculars and preoculars elongate; preoculars mildly visible from above; loreal single; much smaller than preoculars and nasals. Nostril in the middle of an elongate nasal; postoculars 2, small; 8 supralabials (3 rd to 5 th entering orbit), the last one largest; 10���11 infralabials (the first six in contact with genials); temporals 3+2/3+2/3; preventral single; ventrals 268; subcaudals 133 pairs. Colouration in preservative completely faded and bleached, uniform pale creamy white both dorsally and ventrally, without any pattern; body with brownish borders along some scales; eye of a similar colour, pupil barely discernale; tail slightly darker. Variation shown by other syntypes and referred material. Agreeing with the lectotype in most aspects and showing the following intrasepcific variations: scalerows: 21:21:15-17; SVL 1060���1340 mm; tail 295���375 mm; juveniles: SVL 245���382 mm; tail: 92���117 mm; ventrals 255���267; subcaudals 102���127. Dorsal colouration variable from bright coral red to brown or olive green, with or without black crossbars across the body and tail. Head unpatterned dorsally; ventrals usually a paler hue than the dorsal colour, completely lacking pattern. Distribution and natural history. Restricted to islands of the Andaman Archipelago, in the Bay of Bengal. Not found in the Nicobar Islands or elsewhere (Fig. 13). Boiga andamanensis is nocturnal and is often seen after dusk, along low lying bushes and shrubs, foraging for lizards (especially of the genus Coryphophylax) and frogs (pers. obs.)., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, Gernot, 2020, Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key, pp. 301-332 in Zootaxa 4779 (3) on pages 316-318, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4779.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/3835357, {"references":["Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155.","Das, I., Dattagupta, B. & Gayen, N. C. (1998) History and catalogue of reptile types in the collection of the Zoological Survey of India. Journal of South Asian Natural History, 3 (2), 121 - 172.","Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, Including the Whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region. Reptilia and Amphibia. 3 (Serpentes). Taylor and Francis, London, 583 pp.","Deraniyagala, P. E. P. (1955) A colored atlas of some vertebrates from Ceylon. Vol. 3. Serpentoid Reptilia, Colombo, xix + 121 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.2307 / 1439475"]}

Boiga nuchalis (G��nther, 1875) (Tables 3���4; Fig. 6, Fig. 9D) Dipsas nuchalis G��nther, 1875 Dipsas ceylonensis (non Dipsadomorphus ceylonensis G��nther, 1858)��� Boulenger (1890) part Boiga ceylonensis (non Dipsadomorphus ceylonensis G��nther, 1858)��� Smith (1943) part; Hutton (1949) part; Hutton & David (2009) part Boiga nuchalis (non Dipsadomorphus nuchalis ���Wall, 1911)��� G��nther (1875); Inger et al. 1984 Boiga ceylonensis dakhunensis Deraniyagala, 1955 Specimens examined. Males (n=10). Syntypes. Males: India. BMNH 74.4.29.935, BMNH 74.4.29.933, 36; Females: BMNH 74.4.29.934, 37 and BMNH 74.4.29.967, all collected by R.H. Beddome from the ��� West Coast Forests ���[of India]. Additional Specimens: India. Tamil Nadu. MNHN 1946.69 and MNHN 1948.301 both Yercaud, Salem; BNHS 1891 Benhope, Nilgiris. Kerala. FMNH 217700 Trivandrum; BNHS 1842 Palagapandy, Palghat; BNHS 1890 Travancore; BNHS 1887 Kartikolam, Mananthavadi, Waynad District. Females (n=8). India. Tamil Nadu. CAS 17248 Anama Kays [Anaimalais] Madras [Presidency]. BNHS 1893 Anamallai hills, 3000 ft. Kerala. BMNH 1924.10.13.19 Kattayam [Kottayam], Travancore; BNHS 1843 Nilambur; BNHS 1845 Nelliampathy, Palghat. Taxonomic history. Boiga nuchalis was described by G��nther (1875), as Dipsas nuchalis, from the ���the forests of the West Coast [of India]���. It was later synonymised with Boiga ceylonensis by Boulenger (1890). Wall (1909) recognized it again as a valid species after having revised the Boiga ceylonensis -group and described two more species, B. beddomei and B. andamanensis. Smith (1943) once again synonymised B. nuchalis with B. ceylonensis. Inger et al. (1984) considered B. nuchalis as a valid species and this view was followed by most of the recent authors (Das 2002; Ganesh & Arumugam 2016; Ganesh et al. 2018). Nomenclatural notes. Deraniyagala (1955) misunderstood the fact that Wall (1909; 1911) had wrongly attributed the authorship of the taxon Dipsas nuchalis G��nther to Beddome. It should be noted that this authorship credited to Beddome is purely a lapsus as we could not trace any mention of Dipsas nuchalis by this latter author. Nevertheless, believing B. nuchalis Beddome sensu Wall was a distinct, valid taxon on its own, Deraniyagala created an unnecessary new taxon, with the status of a nomen novum, Boiga ceylonensis dakhunensis Deraniyagala, 1955. But Wall���s cursorial mistake in attributing B. nuchalis to Beddome cannot be considered to be the description of an available taxon on its own and therefore it does not enter into homonymy. There cannot be any doubt that the authorship and date of the nomen Dipsas nuchalis is G��nther, 1875 (also see Vogel & Ganesh 2013; Wallach et al. 2014; Aengals et al. 2018). G��nther (1875) only mentioned Beddome as the collector of the types (see G��nther 1875: 233). Deraniyagala stated, erroneously, that ���G��nther���s name nuchalis cannot be utilized for the latter [south Indian population], since it was employed by Beddome for another species (see Wall 1909: 153). The name dakhunensis is proposed for the Indian subspecies of B. ceylonensis.��� He was expressly intending to create this as a nomen novum (or replacement name) for Indian populations (see Art. 13.1.3 ICZN 1999). Deraniyagala was obviously erroneous in this interpretation as, whatever may have been written by Wall (1909), Dipsas nuchalis G��nther, 1875 would have had priority over any ��� Boiga nuchalis Beddome ���. So Deraniyagala should have had considered this ��� Dipsas nuchalis Beddome ��� to be a primary homonym of G��nther���s taxon, and thus permanently invalid. Deraniyagala (1955) embraced an obsolete concept of B. ceylonensis in Indian Peninsula that included supposedly synonymous taxa like B. beddomei, B. nuchalis and B. andamanensis. As he wrote, his replacement name at the subspecific level was correctly based on the types of Dipsias nuchalis (sic, for Dipsas nuchalis). This is in accordance with Art. 72.7 of ICZN (1999). Because Deraniyagala mentioned characters diagnosing (Recommendation 13A, ICZN, 1999) the taxa of the Boiga ceylonensis group between Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, and because he included Dipsas nuchalis in the synonymy of his Boiga ceylonensis account, this is an available name. Deraniyagala was in error in mentioning a single type, as G��nther���s original description was based on five syntypes (G��nther 1875; Wallach et al. 2014). Therefore, by virtue of Deraniyagala���s typification and of the definition of a nomen novum, Boiga ceylonensis dakhuensis Deraniyagala, 1955 is deemed to be an objective junior synonym of Dipsas nuchalis G��nther, 1875 as per Art. 72.7 of ICZN (1999). Contrary to Deraniyagala���s misconception (also see Sharma 2004; Wallach et al. 2014) Deraniyagala���s nomen is not a subspecies of Dipsadomorphus ceylonensis G��nther, 1858. Etymology. Named after its typical collar band on the nuchal region. Diagnosis (redefined herein). A species of Boiga endemic to southwestern India, characterised by the following combination of characters: 21���23 midbody scale rows (vs. 19 in B. ceylonensis, B. thackerayi, B. beddomei, B. flaviviridis); vertebral scales strongly enlarged (vs. mildly enlarged in B. barnesii); venter brownish-grey and not yellowish in life (vs. yellowish-brown in B. thackerayi, B. flaviviridis; variable in B. andamanensis; dorsum predominantly brown (vs. green in B. flaviviridis; variable in B. andamanensis); bars brown or reddish-brown (vs. bars black in B. thackerayi, B. beddomei); ventrolateral pattern with a series of spots on both tips of each ventral scale (vs. with alternate white and black blotches in B. barnesii, B. thackerayi; without any pattern in B. andamanensis, B. flaviviridis); temporal larger than coastal body scale (vs. subequal to coastal body scale in B. dightoni). Redescription of an adult male syntype (BMNH 74.4.29.935). A medium-sized specimen reaching 900 mm total length, with slender habitus, thin neck, wide head; long tail (relative tail length 22 %); dorsal scale rows 21:21:15; rostral visible from above; preocular 1, subequal in size to loreal; postoculars 2; loreal 1; supralabials 8, with 3 rd��� 5 th / 4 th��� 6 th ones touching eye; infralabials 11, with 1���5 touching chin shields; temporals 13/14; preventral 1; ventrals 242, angulate laterally; cloacal 1; 105 subcaudals pairs. Dorsal colour brownish-grey, with 66 brownish crossbars on body; crossbars covering 2���4 scales in size, extending either sides up to 3���4 scale rows across; interspaces often with sparse dark dots; crown without any markings on top (rarely some dark shades present); a distinct postocular stripe up to the jaw angle; labials, chin and venter ashy brown, finely spotted with darker shade; venter bordered by a series of brown spots, covering both the terminal ends of every ventral scale. Variation shown by other syntypes and referred material. Other specimens agreeing with the above syn- type in most aspects; showing the following intraspecific variations: snout to vent length 408���904 mm (excluding juveniles); tail length 94���257 mm; relative tail length: 18.7���22.5 %; (18)21/23���21/23���15(14) scale rows; temporals 10���15; ventrals 228���255; subcaudals 94���109 pairs; number of cross bars 45���89 on body, 7���36 on tail. Distribution and natural history. This is perhaps the most common species of the genus Boiga in the wet forests of southwestern India. Often regarded as a rare and little-known species (Das 2002), it occurs at quite a widespread and sometimes disjunct range in southwestern India. This species has been recorded throughout the Western Ghats (Wall 1919; Inger et al. 1984; Hutton & David 2009 part; Chandramouli & Ganesh 2010; Ganesh et al. 2013) and even in Southern Eastern Ghats (Ganesh & Arumugam 2016; Ganesh et al. 2018). It has been precisely reported from Agasthyamalai (Inger et al. 1984; Chandramouli & Ganesh 2010), Meghamalai and Anaiamalai (Hutton & David 2009 part), Nilgiri-Wayanad (Wall 1919), Malnad and Canara hills (Ganesh et al. 2013) in the Western Ghats. In the Eastern Ghats, this species has been recorded from Shevaroys, Bilgiri, Melagiri, Kolli and Sirumalai hills (Ganesh & Arumugam 2016; Ganesh et al. 2018). We have observed it in Ponmudi, Karian Shola and Agumbe in Western Ghats and in Bilgiri, Melagiri, Shevaroys, Kolli and Sirumalai in the Eastern Ghats (Fig. 13). However, we refute its purported (historical) distribution in Himalayan foothills and parts of Northern Eastern Ghats (Wallach et al. 2014). We suggest that this species is absent from North India (also see Mohapatra et al. 2010; Das et al. 2010)., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, Gernot, 2020, Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key, pp. 301-332 in Zootaxa 4779 (3) on pages 311-314, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4779.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/3835357, {"references":["Gunther, A. C. L. G. (1875) Second report on collections of Indian Reptiles obtained by the British Museum. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1875, 224 - 234.","Gunther, A. C. L. G. (1858) Catalogue of Colubrine snakes of the British Museum. Printed by the order of the Trustees of the British Museum, London, XVI + 281 pp.","Boulenger, G. A. (1890) The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor & Francis, London, xviii + 541 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 57017","Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, Including the Whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region. Reptilia and Amphibia. 3 (Serpentes). Taylor and Francis, London, 583 pp.","Hutton, A. F. (1949) Notes on the snakes and mammals of the High Wavy Mountains, Madura District, South India. Part II- Mammals. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 48, 681 - 694.","Hutton, A. F. & David, P. (2009) Notes on a collection of snakes from south India, with emphasis on the snake fauna of the Megamalai Hills (High Wavy Mountains). Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 105 (3), 299 - 316.","Inger, R. F., Shaffer, H. B., Koshy, M. & Ramesh, B. (1984) A report on a collection of amphibians and reptiles from the Ponmudi, Kerala, South India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 81 (3), 551 - 570.","Deraniyagala, P. E. P. (1955) A colored atlas of some vertebrates from Ceylon. Vol. 3. Serpentoid Reptilia, Colombo, xix + 121 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.2307 / 1439475","Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155.","Das, I. (2002) A photographic guide to snakes and other reptiles of India. New Holland Publ., London, 144 pp.","Ganesh, S. R. & Arumugam, M. (2016) Species Richness of Montane Herpetofauna of Southern Eastern Ghats, India: A Historical Resume and a Descriptive Checklist. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 23 (1), 7 - 24.","Vogel, G. & Ganesh, S. R. (2013) A new species of cat snake (Reptilia: Serpentes: Colubridae: Boiga) from dry forests of eastern Peninsular India. Zootaxa, 3637 (2), 158 - 168. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 3637.2.6","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 1237 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.1201 / b 16901","Aengals, R., Sathish Kumar, V. M., Palot, M. J. & Ganesh, S. R. (2018) A Checklist of Reptiles of India. Version 3.0. 35 pp. Online publication. Available from: http: // www. zsi. gov. in (accessed 24 April 2020)","Sharma, R. C. (2004) Handbook Indian Snakes. Akhil Books, New Delhi, 292 pp.","Wall, F. (1919) Notes on a collection of snakes made in the Nilgiri hills and the adjacent Wayanad. Journal of the Bombay","Das, A., Mohapatra, P. P., Purkayastha, J. Sengupta, S. Dutta, S. K., Ahmed, F. & Tillack, F. (2010) A contribution to Boiga gokool (Gray, 1835) (Reptilia: Squamata: Colubridae). Russian Journal of Herpetology, 17 (3), 161 - 178."]}

Boiga dightoni (Boulenger, 1894) (Tables 3���4; Fig.7) Dipsas dightoni Boulenger, 1894 Dipsadomorphus dightoni ��� Wall 1909 Boiga dightoni ��� Smith 1943; Inger et al. 1984 Specimens examined. Females (n=4). Holotype (by monotypy): India. Kerala. BMNH 1946.1.1.32 Peermad, Travancore. Other specimens: FMNH 217699 Ponmundi, Trivandrum; BNHS 1839 and BNHS 2813 from Peermade, Travancore State. Taxonomic history. Boiga dightoni was described as Dipsas dightoni by Boulenger (1894), based on a specimen presented by H.S. Ferguson from ���Pirmeed��� in Travancore. Since then this species has not been collected despite several surveys, until Inger et al. (1984) reported it from the Ponmudi Hills further south. Though recognized by subsequent workers, almost nothing is known about this species (Das 2002; Whitaker & Captain 2004; Wallach et al. 2014). Etymology. Patronym, named in genitive singular case, after S.M. Dighton, the collector of the type specimen; he was a tea planter who worked in the Ghats (Boulenger 1894). Diagnosis (redefined herein). A species of Boiga endemic to the Southern Western Ghats of India, characterised by the following combination of characters: 21���23 midbody scale rows (vs. 19 in B. ceylonensis, B. thackerayi, B. beddomei, B. flaviviridis); vertebral scales strongly enlarged (vs. mildly enlarged in B. barnesii); venter with salmon pink spots in life (vs. yellowish in B. thackerayi, B. flaviviridis; variable in B. andamanensis; dorsum predominantly uniform brown (vs. green in B. flaviviridis; variable in B. andamanensis); ventrolateral pattern with salmon pinkish markings (vs. with alternate white and black blotches in B. barnesii, B. thackerayi; without any pattern in B. andamanensis, B. flaviviridis); temporal subequal to coastal body scale (vs. larger than coastal body scale in B. nuchalis). Redescription of the holotype. A medium-sized snake reaching 1,083 mm total length, snout-vent length: 858 mm, tail length: 225 mm; with fairly slender habitus, narrower neck, wider head; long tail (relative tail length 20.8%); 23���23���15 scale rows; rostral scarcely visible from above; preocular 1, larger than loreal; postoculars 2; loreal 1; supralabials 8, with 3 rd��� 5 th touching eye; infralabials 13/14, with 1���5 touching chin shields; temporals 18/17; preventrals 2; ventrals 242, angulate laterally; cloacal 1; subcaudals 99 pairs. Dorsal colour brownish-grey, with traces of obscure transverse markings across; no markings on top of head; head with a few minute dark dots on labia, loreal and near parietals; labials, chin and venter ashy brown, finely spotted with darker shade along both sides. Variation. Other specimens agreeing with holotype in most aspects and showing the following variation: snout to vent length 352���908 mm; tail length 194 (incomplete in other specimens); anterior scale rows 21���21���15(16) scale rows; temporals 17���19; infralabials 11���12; ventrals 235���248; subcaudals 102���112 pairs (incomplete in the rest); number of cross bars 0���66 on body. Distribution and natural history. This species has rarely, if ever, been collected and properly identified. Apart from the original description the only known subsequent collection and description of this species is from Ponmudi Hills (Inger et al. 1984) (Fig. 13). Animals were seen actively foraging at night on plants and bushes and one was recorded having eaten a Calotes. There have been a few reports of this species from the Anaimalais, but these lack morphological or taxonomical data (Vijayakumar et al. 2001) to permit unambiguous verification., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, Gernot, 2020, Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key, pp. 301-332 in Zootaxa 4779 (3) on pages 314-315, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4779.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/3835357, {"references":["Boulenger, G. A. (1894) Description of a new snake found in Travancore, by Mr. S. Dighton. Pirmaad. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 8, 528.","Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155.","Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, Including the Whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region. Reptilia and Amphibia. 3 (Serpentes). Taylor and Francis, London, 583 pp.","Inger, R. F., Shaffer, H. B., Koshy, M. & Ramesh, B. (1984) A report on a collection of amphibians and reptiles from the Ponmudi, Kerala, South India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 81 (3), 551 - 570.","Das, I. (2002) A photographic guide to snakes and other reptiles of India. New Holland Publ., London, 144 pp.","Whitaker, R. & Captain, A. (2004) Snakes of India-the field guide. Draco Books, Chennai, 500 pp.","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 1237 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.1201 / b 16901"]}

Boiga thackerayi Giri, Deepak, Captain, Pawar & Tillack, 2019 Taxonomic history. This species was recently described from the Western Ghats. There is no doubt on its validity, however its relationships with other cryptic taxa are not yet resolved and the distribution range of this taxon is not completely known. Specimens examined. none Etymology. Eponym honouring Mr. Tejas Thackeray for his taxonomical works in the Western Ghats. Diagnosis (after Giri et al. 2019). A species of Boiga endemic to Western Ghats, characterised by the following combination of characters: 17���19 midbody scale rows (vs. 21���23 in B. nuchalis, B. dightoni, B. andamanensis); vertebral scales strongly enlarged (vs. mildly enlarged in B. barnesii); the presence of 1 preocular (vs. 3 in B. barnesii); body anteriorly yellowish and posteriorly pale pibnkish (vs. body light brownish, throughout in B. ceylonensis, body light greenish in B. flaviviridis); ventrolateral region with distinct white and black adjacent blotches (vs. with a series of spots on both tips of each ventral scale in B. ceylonensis); subcaudals 110 in B. beddomei, B. flaviviridis). Description of the holotype. See Giri et al. (2019). Distribution and natural history. The specimens were collected from near Humbarli, in Koyna Hills of northern Western Ghats. The snakes were reported close to a perennial stream in a semievergreen patch of forest. All individuals were observed on trees, close to forest streams, and were seen to be active during the night. One specimen fed on frogs and frog eggs in captivity (Giri et al. 2019). Taxonomic comments. Snakes with superficially smilar morphology (see Appendix, as Boiga cf. thackerayi) to the recently described B. thackerayi were studied both in life and as preserved samples from the Western Ghats south and north of the Palghat Gap. These are provisionally represented here as Boiga cf. thackerayi. The taxonomic status of these individuals is currently under investigation. Molecular studies are underway to evaluate their taxonomic status with respect to B. thackerayi., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, Gernot, 2020, Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key, pp. 301-332 in Zootaxa 4779 (3) on page 318, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4779.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/3835357, {"references":["Giri, V. B., Deepak, V., Captain, A., Pawar, S. & Tillack, F. (2019) A new species of Boiga Fitzinger, 1826 (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the northern Western Ghats of India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 116, 1 - 11."]}

Boiga ceylonensis (G��nther, 1858) (Tables 3���4; Fig. 3, 9A&B) Dipsadomorphus ceylonensis G��nther, 1858 Dipsas ceylonensis��� Boulenger (1890) part Boiga ceylonensis��� Smith (1943) part; Hutton (1949) part; Hutton & David (2009) part Boiga ceylonensis ceylonensis ��� Deraniyagala, 1955 Specimens examined. Males (n=18). Lectotype (designated herein): Sri Lanka. BMNH 54.3.21.22 from ��� Ceylon ���. Paralectotypes: BMNH 46.12.2, BMNH 53.12.24.29, BMNH 1946.1.4.79 all from Ceylon. Additional specimens: Sri Lanka. BMNH 1955.1.9.83���86 Tonaconibe Estate; USNM 267760 Kandy; USNM 254753 Sabarugamuwa; SMF 19676 Ceylon; SMF 32595 Colombo; ZMB 8058 Ceylon; NMW 20225 Deniyaya; ZMB 7302 Paradenia; UPZMR007 and UPZMR010b both from Peradeniya, Kandy; FMNH 121533 Ceylon; FMNH 120919 Ceylon, Uva: Namunukula, 4000���; FMNH 179248 Namunukula, Tonacombe Estate, 3900���; FMNH 167006 Central Prov: Meda-Maha Nuwara. Females (n=19). Paralectotype: Sri Lanka. BMNH 19.3.29.10 Ceylon. Additional specimens: BMNH 97.10.20.3 Neboda; BMNH 1933.12.6.16 Diyatalaura, Uva province; BMNH 1915.5.3.8 Anuradhapura; FMNH 142403 Uva: Moneragala, Moneragala Estate, 3000 ���; FMNH 131380 North Central Prov: Manampitiya; FMNH 167008 Central Prov: Meda-Maha Nuwara; FMNH 167007 Central Prov: Meda-Maha Nuwara; FMNH 165053 South Prov: Bundala; UPZMR010a Peradeniya, Kandy; UPZMR010c Peradeniya, Kandy; RMNH 1027, ZFMK 31782, ZFMK 36841, ZFMK 20352, NMW 25352:3, SMF 19677, NMW 25470 all from Ceylon without exact locality. Taxonomic history. G��nther (1858) described this species as Dipsadomorphus ceylonensis based on a series of seven syntypes (re-registered as BMNH 54.3.21.22, BMNH 46.12.2, BMNH 53.12.24.29, BMNH 1946.1.4.79, BMNH 19.3.29.10) comprising adults and juveniles as well as male and female specimens all hailing from Ceylon [now Sri Lanka]. Boulenger (1890) transferred it to the genus Dipsas. Wall (1909) split this complex into five species. Smith (1943) transferred them to the genus Boiga and, following Annandale (1909), synonymised all of these taxa back again with B. ceylonensis with some reservations. Deraniyagala (1955) split B. ceylonensis from Sri Lanka and from Western Ghats and named them as subspecies Boiga ceylonensis ceylonensis, as the nominotypical form from Sri Lanka, and Boiga ceylonensis dakhunensis as a new subspecies from Indian peninsula (see B. nuchalis account below). This subspecific arrangement was not followed by later authors (Whitaker & Captain, 2004; Somaweera, 2006; Wallach et al., 2014). with obscure dark wash) The type series of Dipsadomoprhus ceylonensis is a mixture of species, with BMNH 1946.1.4.75 belonging to the species B. beddomei sensu lato. Thus we here refine the diagnosis and definition of Dipsadomorphus ceylonensis, by designating a lectotype. Hence, in accordance with Art. 74.7 of the Code (ICZN, 1999), we here designate a well preserved adult male specimen BMNH 54.3.21.22 from ��� Ceylon ��� as the lectotype of Dipsadomorphus ceylonensis. Etymology. Toponym, for ���an inhabitant of Ceylon���, now Sri Lanka. Diagnosis (redefined herein). A species of Boiga endemic to Sri Lanka, defined by the following combination of characters: 19 midbody scale rows (vs. 21���23 in B. nuchalis, B. dightoni, B. andamanensis); predominantly brownish dorsum (vs. greenish in B. flaviviridis; variable in B. andamanensis); vertebral scales strongly enlarged (vs. feebly enlarged in B. barnesii); crown patterned with distinct black blotches (vs. crown unpatterned in B. beddomei, B. andamanensis); subcaudals 110 in B. beddomei); ventrolateral region devoid of large adjacent white and black blotches (vs. blotches present in B. barnesii, B. thackerayi), but with a series of spots on both the ends of each ventral scale (vs. venter unpatterned in B. andamanensis, B. flaviviridis). Description of the lectotype. A medium-sized specimen (total length 972 mm), snout vent length 740 mm, tail length 232 mm; long tail (relative tail length 23.9%); with slender habitus, thin neck, wide head; 19���19���15 scale rows; rostral visible from above; preocular 1, subequal to loreal; postoculars 2; loreal 1; supralabials 8, 3 rd, 4 th and 5 th ones touching eye; infralabials 11/10, with 1���4 touching chin shields; temporals 10; preventrals 1; ventrals 234, angulate laterally; cloacal 1; subcaudals 108 pairs. Dorsal colour drab brownish-grey, with darker brown to blackish-brown crossbars; crossbars covering 2���4 scales in size, extending either sides up to 3���4 scale rows across, about 61 bars on body, 17 on tail; interspaces often with sparse dark dots; a distinct postocular stripe up to the jaw angle; distinct circular markings on top of head; labials, chin and venter ashy brown; venter finely spotted with darker shade, each ventral scale with two dark dots at both ends, giving a dotted line-like appearance along ventrolateral region. Variation. Our material agrees with the lectotype in most aspects, with the following variation: snout-vent length 502���764 mm, tail length 155���215 mm, relative tail length 21.8���23.9%; midbody scale rows 19 (21 in 1 out of 37 cases); supralabials 8 (very rarely 7, i.e. 3 out of 74 cases), 3 rd to 5 th touching eye (very rarely 3 rd and 4 th only); infralabials 10���12, with 1���4 touching chin shields; temporals 9���16; preventrals 1���2; ventrals 217���237; subcaudals 95���109 pairs; dorsum with about 52���76 cross bars on body and 16���36 on tail. Distribution and natural history. This species in endemic to Sri Lanka and occurs in the wet forested parts of the island (Wall, 1921; Samarawickrama et al. 2005; Somaweera 2006) (Fig. 13). One specimen was found by us in Kanneliya Rain Forest Reserve (Galle, Sri Lanka) around midnight lying on a bush at about 1 m above the ground, obviously ambushing for prey. It was not moving while being photographed and was not aggressive. Another adult female was found close to Hunasgiriya range near Kandy. It was sighted on a tree branch at 1.5 m height at 21:50 hrs, near tea gardens., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, Gernot, 2020, Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key, pp. 301-332 in Zootaxa 4779 (3) on pages 305-308, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4779.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/3835357, {"references":["Gunther, A. C. L. G. (1858) Catalogue of Colubrine snakes of the British Museum. Printed by the order of the Trustees of the British Museum, London, XVI + 281 pp.","Boulenger, G. A. (1890) The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor & Francis, London, xviii + 541 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 57017","Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, Including the Whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region. Reptilia and Amphibia. 3 (Serpentes). Taylor and Francis, London, 583 pp.","Hutton, A. F. (1949) Notes on the snakes and mammals of the High Wavy Mountains, Madura District, South India. Part II- Mammals. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 48, 681 - 694.","Hutton, A. F. & David, P. (2009) Notes on a collection of snakes from south India, with emphasis on the snake fauna of the Megamalai Hills (High Wavy Mountains). Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 105 (3), 299 - 316.","Deraniyagala, P. E. P. (1955) A colored atlas of some vertebrates from Ceylon. Vol. 3. Serpentoid Reptilia, Colombo, xix + 121 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.2307 / 1439475","Wall, F. (1909) Remarks on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3, 151 - 155.","Annandale, N. (1909) Major Wall on some forms of Dipsadomorphus. Records of the Indian Museum, 3 (3), 281 - 282.","Whitaker, R. & Captain, A. (2004) Snakes of India-the field guide. Draco Books, Chennai, 500 pp.","Somaweera, R. (2006) The Snakes of Sri Lanka. Wildlife Heritage Trust of Sri Lanka, Colombo, 270 pp. [in Sinhala]","Wallach, V., Williams, K. L. & Boundy, J. (2014) Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 1237 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.1201 / b 16901","Wall, F. (1921) Ophidia Taprobanica or the Snakes of Ceylon. Colombo Museum H. R. Cottle, Govt. Printer, Colombo, xxii + 581 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 54947","Samarawickrama, V. A. M. P. K., Samarawickrama, V. A. P., Wijesena, N. M. & Orlov, N. L. (2005) A new species of genus Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae: Colubrinae) from Sri Lanka. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 12 (3), 213 - 222."]}

We conducted a taxonomic revision of the arboreal snakes of the Boiga ceylonensis-group, all inhabiting the Indian subcontinent. Based on 15 characters, recorded from more than 100 specimens, representing eight recognized taxa, we conducted a multivariate morphometric analysis to redefine the taxonomic boundaries. We provide redescriptions of the nominate taxa in this group based on re-examination of the name-bearing types. The types of B. ceylonensis, B. beddomei, B. barnesii, B. dightoni, B. nuchalis and B. andamanensis are redescribed, where appropriate lectotypes are selected, illustrated and their nomenclature, synonymy and distribution are discussed. Status of the nominate taxon Boiga ceylonensis dakhunensis Deraniyagala, 1955 is fixed as an objective junior synonym of Dipsas nuchalis Günther, 1875. An updated key to the species of this group is presented.

Boiga barnesii (G��nther, 1869) (Tables 3���4; Fig. 5, 9E) Dipsas barnesii G��nther, 1869 Dipsadomorphus barnesii ��� Boulenger 1896; Wall 1921 Boiga barnesi ��� Smith 1943; Samarawickrama et al. 2005 Boiga barnesii ��� Das & De Silva 2005; Somaweera 2006 Specimens examined. Males (n=2). Holotype (by monotypy): Sri Lanka. BMNH 69.7.24.11, a male from Ceylon. Other specimen: NMW 25360, a male also from Ceylon. Etymology. Patronym named after Richard Hawkswoth Barnes who collected the holotype in Ceylon. Diagnosis. A species of Boiga endemic to Sri Lanka, having 19 midbody scale rows (vs. 21���23 in B. nuchalis, B. dightoni, B. andamanensis); preoculars 3 on each side of head (vs. preocular 1 in all South Asian congeners); 3 rd supraocular not touching the eye (vs. touching the eye in all other South Asian congeners); vertebral scale row feebly enlarged (vs. strongly enlarged in B. andamanensis, B. ceylonensis, B. beddomei, B. thackerayi); series of large oblong blotched pattern dorsally (vs. cross bars dorsally in B. ceylonensis); ventrolateral region with distinct white and black adjacent blotches (vs. such pattern absent in all South Asian congeners except B. thackerayi). Redescription of the holotype. A small-sized snake reaching 572 mm total length, with slender habitus, thin neck, wide head; long tail (relative tail length 22.6%); 19���19���14 dorsal scale rows; rostral visible from above; preoculars 3 on each side of head; postoculars 2; loreal 1; supralabials 8, with 4 th, 5 th touching eye; infralabials 10/9, with 1���4 touching chin shields; temporals 10; preventral 2; ventrals 217, angulate laterally; cloacal 1; subcaudals 96 pairs. Dorsum dark greyish-brown, with 47 (32 on body, 15 on tail) blackish-brown, oblong blotches; interspaces often with sparse dark dots; a large dark wash covering the entire top aspect of head from rostrum to occiput; very broad postocular stripe up to jaw angle; labials, chin and venter ashy white, getting darker posteriorly; underside finely spotted with darker hue; venter edged along both sides with a series of large adjacent white and black blotches, alternating at an interval of every 3���4 ventrals. Variation. Other specimens agreeing with holotype in most aspects; our second male examined show the following variation: snout to vent length 444 mm; tail length 123 mm; relative tail length 22.9%; posterior scale rows 13; temporals 19; ventrals 218; subcaudals 100 pairs; number of cross bars 66 on body. Distribution and natural history. This species is endemic to Sri Lanka (Das & De Silva 2005) (Fig. 13). It is restricted to the wet forest zones in the hilly, central and southwestern provinces of the island (Somaweera 2006). Definite records of this species are from near Kandy (Samarawickrama et al. 2005)., Published as part of Ganesh, S. R., Achyuthan, N. S., Chandramouli, S. R. & Vogel, Gernot, 2020, Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): reexamination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key, pp. 301-332 in Zootaxa 4779 (3) on page 310, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4779.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/3835357, {"references":["Gunther, A. C. L. G. (1869) Report on two collections of Indian reptiles. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1869, 500 - 507. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / j. 1469 - 7998.1869. tb 07359. x","Boulenger, G. A. (1896) Catalogue of the snakes in the British Museum, Vol. iii, containing the Colubridae (Ophisthoglyphae and Proteroglyphae), Amblyocephalidae and Viperidae. Taylor & Francis, London, xiv + 727 pp.","Wall, F. (1921) Ophidia Taprobanica or the Snakes of Ceylon. Colombo Museum H. R. Cottle, Govt. Printer, Colombo, xxii + 581 pp. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 54947","Smith, M. A. (1943) The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, Including the Whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region. Reptilia and Amphibia. 3 (Serpentes). Taylor and Francis, London, 583 pp.","Samarawickrama, V. A. M. P. K., Samarawickrama, V. A. P., Wijesena, N. M. & Orlov, N. L. (2005) A new species of genus Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae: Colubrinae) from Sri Lanka. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 12 (3), 213 - 222.","Das, I. & De Silva, A. (2005) A photographic guide to snakes and other reptiles of Sri Lanka. New Holland Publ., London, 144 pp.","Somaweera, R. (2006) The Snakes of Sri Lanka. Wildlife Heritage Trust of Sri Lanka, Colombo, 270 pp. [in Sinhala]"]}

Snakes are a striking taxon on many levels and have an indelible place in the collective culture of humanity. This is due to a number of unusual features including their limblessness, ability to ingest large prey, but most importantly their venom. From a biological perspective, snakes are equally fascinating, showing how a simple body plan can be used to great effect in an extremely broad variety of niches. Snakes are globally distributed and ecologically diverse; as a result, since recent research has shown that most snakes are venomous to some degree, their venom is equally diverse. This thesis focuses on one major toxin family: three-finger toxins (3FTx). These toxins can be found in virtually all venomous snake lineages and are often neurotoxic. Since their original recruitment there have been numerous instances of structural and functional innovation within this toxin family. The research in this thesis pertains to several such novel adaptations in snakes of the colubrid and elapid families, many of whose venom is composed primarily of these toxins.Chapter 2 deals with the ancestral version 3FTx and how, in the colubrine genus Boiga, simple mutations in toxins can lead to structural changes, in this case additional cysteines enable the formation of dimeric toxins with increased potency. These novel toxins can, in turn, open up new niches to the snakes which possess those toxins. In B. irregularis they facilitated a destructive invasion event and may have similarly assisted in the spread of an ancestral Boiga since our research shows that several other species possess similar dimeric toxins. This echoes a process that occurred in the ancestor of the elapids where the loss of a pair of cysteines and their disulfide bond was followed by an incredible diversification of these toxins and the snakes that produce them. Chapter 3 explores venom composition and activity of the genus Calliophis, the most basal genus of the elapids. C. bivirgatus and C. intestinalis both possess extremely elongated venom glands and each produce 3FTx with novel sodium channel toxicity. However, the two venoms produce opposite effects from one another. These results suggests some intriguing possibilities about the evolutionary history of these novel traits in Calliophis and the general composition of their venoms inform our understanding of how the venoms of more derived elapids evolved.Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the genus Micrurus. This genus from the Americas is by far the most speciose genus of elapids and belongs to the coral snake clade which is the next branch in the phylogeny of the elapids after Calliophis. The venoms of these snakes all contain a high number of unique 3FTx, though some venoms may be dominated by PLA2 toxins in terms of overall composition. Chapter 4 focuses on the sequence diversity of 3FTx from this genus and the selection regimes under which they operate. This diversity may lay the groundwork for rapid changes in the toxin composition of the venom and accompanying changes in venom activity. Chapter 5 directly assesses the neurotoxic activity of 3FTx by testing the affinity of toxins in Micrurus venoms to the binding site of nicotinic acetycholine receptors from a wide sampling of other vertebrates. This is the known site of action for many 3FTx and bears out some of the predictions made in Chapter 4. The venoms in this study represent a diverse selection of species in terms of geography, phylogeny, and ecology and the variation in venom efficacy across targets shows clear phylogenetic trends, but that changes in expression levels or toxin sequences can facilitate the shift from one niche to another.Because of the fairly direct link from genotype to phenotype, relatively small biochemical novelties in certain toxins can lead to large ecological shifts and influence the evolution of large clades of snakes and those species that coevolve with them. Taken together, this research provides a look at several such novelties and their continuing impact on the relevant organisms. There have been many more such occurrences within the 3FTx alone, to say nothing of other toxin families. If the patterns we find in our research hold true, then many other major events in the history of snake evolution may have co-occurred with similar novel venom phenotypes.

Pheromones are useful tools for the management of invasive invertebrates, but have proven less successful in field applications for invasive vertebrates. The brown treesnake, Boiga irregularis, is an invasive predator that has fundamentally altered the ecology of Guam. The development of control tools to manage Boiga remains ongoing. Skin-based, lipophilic pheromone components facilitate mating in brown treesnakes, with females producing the same long-chain, saturated and monounsaturated (ketomonoene) methyl ketones known to function as pheromones in garter snakes, Thamnophis sirtalis. Boiga also express novel, diunsaturated methyl ketones (ketodienes) with a purported function as a sex pheromone. In our study, we implanted 17 β-estradiol in adult male brown treesnakes in order to manipulate methyl ketone expression as sex attractants, an effect that would mirror findings with garter snakes. Specifically, estrogen promoted production of two ketomonoenes, pentatriaconten-2-one and hexatriaconten-2-one, and suppressed production of one ketodiene, heptatriacontadien-2-one. In bioassays, estrogen-implanted males elicited tongue-flicking and chin rubbing behavior from unmanipulated males, though the responses were weaker than those elicited by females. On Guam, wild males exhibited greatest responses to whole female skin lipid extracts and only weak responses to the methyl ketone fractions from females and implanted males. Our results suggest that sex identity in brown treesnakes may be conferred by the ratio of ketomonoenes (female) to ketodienes (male) from skin lipids and may be augmented by a sex-specific endocrine signal (estradiol). However, a blend of long-chain methyl ketones alone is not sufficient to elicit maximal reproductive behaviors in male Boiga.

The Indian egg-eater (Elachistodon westermanni) is a monotypic species of the Genus Elachistodon distributed across the Indian sub-continent. In Africa, there are 13 species of egg-eating snakes of the Genus Dasypeltis. These two genera, Elachistodon and Dasypeltis were thought to be closely related due to similar diet specialization, and shared biogeographic history between the Indian sub-continent and the continent of Africa. In our study, we amplified three mitochondrial genes and one nuclear gene from E. westermanni and reconstructed molecular phylogeny utilizing published sequences to understand the evolutionary relationships between the African, and the Indian egg-eating snakes. We used morphological characters to reinforce our inferences on phylogenetic relationships. We show that the Indian egg-eater is sister to cat snakes of the Genus Boiga, and it does not share recent ancestry with the African egg-eating snakes. Morphological character states point at similarities between Elachistodon and Dasypeltis only in characters associated with their feeding behaviour. Elachistodon westermanni was similar to the Boiga spp. in several other morphological characters, and we provisionally assign E. westermanni under the genus Boiga. Compilation of records of E. westermanni across the Indian sub-continent over the years revealed a positive “Lazarus” effect. We conclude that, the egg-eating behaviour and the associated morphological characters in the snake genera Dasypeltis and Elachistodon are a result of convergent evolution. Based on the conservation status of E. westermanni, it could serve as a flagship species to conserve important wildlife habitats that are being lost rapidly in India.