Hydrophis neglectus Wall, 1906

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 : 315

Hydrophis neglectus Wall, 1906

synonym of Hydrophis stricticollis Günther, 1864

( Table 1 ; Fig. 9 )

Material Examined. ZSI 8598 Holotype from Rangoon (Yangon, Southern Myanmar)

Description. Head small, head shields large, regular; Rostral broader than high; Nasal superior in position, nasal shield in contact with each other; Prefrontal slightly elongated, 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 side of head; One Pre- and Postocular on each side of head; Seven Supralabial on each side of head; 2 nd touching prefrontal; 3 rd and 4 th touching the eye; Infralabial in fragile condition; Chin shield and Scales around neck and midbody in fragile condition; Ventral and Preanal in fragile condition; Number of bands not discernable; Head width 3.9 mm; Head depth 4.1 mm; Head length 11.8 mm; Snout to Vent length 334.0 mm; Tail length 50.0 mm. Dorsally and ventrally the entire body brown. Number of bands not discernable due to faded colouration.

Remarks. Specimen is in fragile condition, hence some of the measurements could not be taken. Wall (1906) stated its scale counts to be scale rows 48:54:45 and ventrals> 420, whereas Smith (1926) stated it to be a young female, with scale rows 41:55 and ventrals 420. Hydrophis neglectus Wall, 1906 was recognized as valid by Wall (1909), but Smith (1926, 1943) treated it as a synonym of H. stricticollis . Wall (1909) whilst recognizing H. neglectus , remarked that it has characters common with H. caerulescens , H. ocellata and H. fasciatus . Wall also alluded to specimens referred to by Sclater (1891) as H. obscurus , by listing Sclater’s entry as a chresonym of H. neglectus . The nominal taxon H. neglectus was unfortunately missed out from the synonymy of H. stricticollis or of any other species by Uetz et al. (2022). However, many treatises both historical ( Smith, 1926, 1943) and recent ( Wallach et al. 2014; Ganesh et al. 2019) have correctly listed H. neglectus as a synonym of H. stricticollis .

Figures

FIGURE 9. Holotype of Hydrophis neglectus ZSI 8598, dorsal (top), ventral (middle) and lateral (bottom) aspects. Photograph by Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata.