Rhabdophis chrysargos (Schlegel, 1837)

Mulcahy, Daniel G., Lee, Justin L., Miller, Aryeh H., Chand, Mia, Thura, Myint Kyaw & Zug, George R., 2018, Filling the BINs of life: Report of an amphibian and reptile survey of the Tanintharyi (Tenasserim) Region of Myanmar, with DNA barcode data, ZooKeys 757, pp. 85-152 : 85

Rhabdophis chrysargos (Schlegel, 1837) Speckle-bellied Keelback Fig. 5F

Description.

Juvenile, not sexed, 258 mm SVL, 88 mm TailL; dorsal scales in 17-15-15 rows, ventrals 168, subcaudals 112 with divided precloacal scale; 9 supralabials, 4th, 5th & 6th touch eye. 12-14 anterior maxillary teeth, 2 or 3 short ones, then 2 to 3 slightly enlarge posterior maxillary teeth. White nuchal chevron with arms extending onto supralabials to beneath eye; dorsum and sides of trunk medium olive brown with lateral series of small, faint light spots; venter immaculate white.

Natural history notes.

Collected at Camp 1 along the Yeybuchaung-ngal stream.

General Distribution.

Southern Southeast Asia through Sundas to Philippines.

Molecular Data.

Our COI sequence was placed in its own BIN and is 5.3% divergent from a specimen in BOLD (private) from Vietnam. There are currently no other COI sequences are available at this time. There are currently no other 16S sequences with which to compare.

Comments.

Rhabdophis chrysargos occurs widely through the southern half of Southeast Asia including the Greater Sunda Islands, the Philippines and Peninsular Malaysia. All records from Myanmar are from the Tanintharyi ( Dowling and Jenner 1988).

Specimens examined.

USNM 587044.

Red List status.

LC.