Distira andamanica Annandale, 1905

Mondal, Sonia, Ganesh, S. R., Sethy, P. G. S., Raghunathan, C., Raha, Sujoy & Sarkar, Sagnik, 2022, Redescriptions of the type specimens of synonymous nominal taxa of sea snakes (Serpentes: Elapidae: Hydrophis, Laticauda) at the Zoological Survey of India, Zootaxa 5169 (4), pp. 301-321 : 310

Distira andamanica Annandale, 1905

synonym of Hydrophis ornatus ( Gray, 1842)

( Table 1 ; Fig. 6 )

Material Examined. ZSI 15238 Holotype, from Andamans (in the Bay of Bengal) India.

Description. Head robust, head shields large, regular; Rostral broader than high; Nasal superior in position, nasal shield in contact with each other; Prefrontal squarish, 2 nd Supralabial touching prefrontal; Frontal longer than the distance from the tip of the rostral; Parietal longer than wide; One large anterior temporal; One supraocular on each sides of head; One preocular on each sides of head; Three postoculars on each sides of head; Seven supralabials on each sides of head; 2 nd touching prefrontal, 3 rd and 4 th touching the eye, 4th below the eye; 6 th broken; Nine infralabials on each sides of head; 4 th infralabial touching chin shield; on right 2 nd infralabial is small, do not touch the Anterior Chin shield; Chin shield well developed; Anterior Pair in contact with each other, Posterior Pair separated from each other; Anterior Pair 4.7 mm, Posterior Pair 4.6 mm; Scales around neck 33: Scales around Midbody 38; Ventral 235, distinct, twice the size of the adjacent dorsal scales; Preanal Slightly enlarged; Dorsal scales with a single keel. Head width 13.6 mm; Head depth 11.7 mm; Head length 29.8 mm; Snout to Vent length 755.0 mm; Tail length 93.0 mm. Head dark dorsally, supralabials and venter of a lighter shade as of the dorsal colour. Body encircled by black bands, interspace white, broad dorsally and on flanks, disintegrating and eventually disappearing ventrally. All ventral scales white. Tail with black bands both dorsally and ventrally. Number of bands around the body till vent 35; Seven bands on tail.

Remarks. Wall (1906) stated it to have scale rows 33:39:35 and ventrals 245, while Smith (1926) stated it to be an adult male, with scale rows 31:40 and ventrals 236. Wall (1909) synonymised Distira andamanica Wall, 1906 with H. ornatus ( Gray, 1842) and this was followed by Smith (1926, 1943) and recent authors ( Wallach et al. 2014; Ganesh et al. 2019).

Figures

FIGURE 6. Holotype of Distira andamanica ZSI 15238, dorsal (top), ventral (middle) and lateral (bottom) aspects. Photograph by Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata.