Date:
August 11, 2016
Source:
Pensoft Publishers
A
new gem has been added to the vast treasure of Mexican reptiles. Mexican
scientists recently described a new and strikingly colored species of earth
snake from the mountains of Puebla and Veracruz in east-central Mexico.
These
burrowing reptiles are seldom encountered and, consequently, have been poorly
studied. Furthermore, several species have restricted distribution, making them
particularly vulnerable to extinction. The description of the new species was
published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
Looking
to shed light on the evolutionary history and diversity of earth snakes, Luis
Canseco-Márquez and Adrián Nieto-Montes de Oca, Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México, started to collect samples of these rarely seen critters.
A
sample from east-central Mexico exhibited a unique set of traits among earth
snakes, one of them showing striking orange and black banding pattern. They
realized that these snakes represented a new species and proceeded to describe
it in collaboration with scientists Carlos J. Pavón-Vázquez, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, and Marco A. López-Luna, Universidad Juárez
Autónoma de Tabasco. The specimens of the new species were deposited in the
herpetological collections of the Museo de Zoología "Alfonso L.
Herrera" and the Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Zongolica.
The
new species is the fourth described by Nieto-Montes de Oca and collaborators
for the last fourteen years from the Mexican highlands. Funding from the
Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) has allowed the team to
discover other species of earth snake in Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Puebla.
"Most
of these snakes have notably small geographic ranges and sometimes are only
found in one type of vegetation. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the
destruction of their habitat. It is important to know them before it gets too
late," note the scientists.
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