Asiatic Herpetological ReseanVol. S, pp. 111-113/.

A New Locality for Cuora pani Song 1984 with Comments on its Known Range
2James Ford Parham and Dong Li
1Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3140 USA, email:parham@socrates.berkeley.edu. 'Southwest Electric Power Design Institute, Dong Feng Road, Chengdu,Sichuan. 610061, China

Abstract.- The discovery of Cuora pani Song 1984 in northern Sichuan Province. China lends credence to thetype locality in southern Shaanxi Province. The localities reported from southern Yunnan Province (the type"require verification.
region of C. ''chriskarannarum
IKey words.- Replilia, Chelonia, Bataguridae, Cuora pani, C. chriskarannarum, C. yunnanensis, C. zhoui, China
Sichuan. Yunnan, distribution, biogeography

Cuora pani Song. 1984 is the first of many new Chinese chelonians to he described over the past fifteen

most importantly, a plastron with dark pigment asso-was based on two

ciated with the seams in the form of rectangular bars.

specimens from the Qin Ling Mountains (PingliThe presence of these turtles in northern Sichuan
Province lends credence to the type locality of Cuora

years.

The

original description

County, southern Shaanxi Province). Later. C. pani
was inadvertently redescribed from southern Yunnan
ProvinceaschriskarannarumC.

byandErnst

McCord (1987) based on pet-trade specimens. DeBruin (1988)

include an olive head, olive-brown carapace, and.

pani in southern Shaanxi Province. The new locality
also closes the distributional gap between the southern
Shaanxi

localityand

thetyperegionofC.

suggested the synonymy of C.
chriskarannarum with C. pani. Subsequently, other"chriskarannarum" from nearly 1200 km to about1050 km. Nevertheless, we feel that the Sichuan local-authors (e.g., Phillipen pers. comm. in Stubbs, 1989;

ity, by verifying the presence of C pani in the northern tributaries of the Yangtze, casts doubt on thefirstMcCord and Iverson,1991) have either independently come to the sameconclusion or at least agree with it. McCord and IverPritchard,son(

1990; Zhao, 1990;

1991 ) recognize that this synonymy requires thatC. paniisreported from two areas which are sepa-

rated by nearly 1200 km (Fig.

1).

Given this unlikely

distribution, they raise the possibility that one of thelocalities (if not both) are erroneous, but withhold fur-ther speculation since the distributions of all

Cuora

are very poorly understood. In this paper we report a

new locality for C. pani which may shed some lighton this issue.

"chriskarannarum" localities. The
become even more suspicious when
the distribution of other species of Cuora are taken
into account. For example, the type locality of Cuora
validity of the C.
latter localities

aurocapitata (Luo and Zong, 1988) is in the eastern

Yangtze drainage. Cuora aurocapitata is a close relaof C. pani, and may prove to be conspecifictive(McCord and Iverson, 1991

with a moveable plastron from people living innorthern Sichuan. Due to the scarcity of these turtles,

The close relation of C.

graphical distribution since both taxa
Yangtze River or its northern tributaries.

In April of 1994 one of us (DL) heard reports of aturtle).

pani and C. aurocapitata is reflected by their biogeo
inhabittheThe type region of C. "chriskarannarum" is in tr.edrainage of the Red River.

Two divides separate theselocalities from the type region of C. pani (in souths atook five years to acquire the first specimens. Threeindividuals were purchased in Guangyuan City byDLYunnan the Pearl River drainage lies between the R<-dRiver and the southwestern tributaries of the Yangtze

and were reportedly captured in the nearby tributaries

We can not rule out a corridor between the Red Riverof the Jialing River (105°. 40' E, 32° 30' N; Fig.

and the Yangtze in northern Yunnan, but note that, inaddition to a mountainous divide, other species ofit1).

Two of the turtles are females; the largest is 180 mm
in straight-line carapace length andgrams. The smaller female is 110

weighs625

mm in carapace

length and 130g The only male is a juvenile (Fig. 2),
98 mm in carapace length and weighing 95g. All three!

Cuora historically inhabited this area.

Cuora zhoui.

turtles match descriptions of Cuora pani (Song,McCord and Iverson,1991).

1984;

Diagnostic characters

1This specimen has been accessioned into the Chengdu

Institute of Biology herpetological collection as CIB-9910544

Asiatic Herpetological ResearchVol. 8, p. 112

1999

Figure 1 Map of China showing known localities of select aquatic Cuora species. A= C. aurocapitata, P= C. pani,
Y= C. yunnanensis, Z= C. zhoui. Localities were taken from original descriptions, McCord and Iverson (1991 and.

),Iverson (1992).

Zhao, 1990 (= Cuora pallidicephala McCord andIverson, 1991) and Cuora yunnanensis (Boulenger,1906)

arereported from tributaries of thenorthern Yunnan (Fig. 1).
Like C.

bothYangtze in"chriskarannarum" the Yunnan records for C. zhoui,

separation. Furthermore, this hypothetical connection

would pass through the known distribution of C. trifasciata (McCord and Iverson, 1991), a close relativeof C. pani and C. aurocapitata (de Bruin, 1988; Buskirk, 1989). In short, if the Yunnan

Province C. pani(the type series of C. "pallidicephala") are derived

localities are real, the biogeographical history of thesefrom the pet trade (McCord and Iverson, 1991) andare from a different province than the type description

turtles is very complex.

Unfortunately, the type series of C.
zhoui itself was purchased from a market so the exact(Zhao, 1990).

provenience of this species remains uncertain. The
localities for C. yunnanensis, however, are probably
they predate the increased turtle tradeassociated with recent economic reforms in China.
valid since

The presence of at least one, and possibly two, congeners within the reported range of C. pani

isstrange

since aquatic Cuora are generally allopatric.

A historic lowland connection between the southern Yunnan and northern Yangtze Cuora pani localities

wouldrequire

evengreater

geographicalIt isfor

important to note that many of the localities

Chinese turtles, including the one reported here,

are based

upon market-bought or else pet trade ani-mals. Pet trade localities, such as the southern Yunnan

Cuora pani localities, should be treated with caution.
The demand for rare species by turtle fanciers greatly
increases their value and, therefore, there is incentive
to hide the true locality as a "trade secret". Direct

cooperation with people from turtle-bearing provinces, however, can help determine the distributionsof these rare turtles.

1999

Asiatic Herpetological ResearchVol. 8, p. 113

Literature Cited
Boulenger, G. A. 1906. Descriptions of new reptiles

from Yunnan. The Annals and Magazine of NaturalHistory 7(17):567-568.
Buskirk, J. R. 1989. New locality records for Chinese

non-marine

chelonians.

ChineseHerpetologicalResearch 2:65-68.
1988 Twee nieuwe Cuora-soortende Bruin R.

uit

China. Lacerta 47:4-6
Ernst C. H. and W. P. McCord. 1987. Two new turtles

from southeast Asia. Proceedings of the BiologicalSociety of Washington 100(3):62 4-628.
Iverson, J. B. 1992.
tion

A revised checklist with distribu-maps of the turtles of the world. Green Nature

Books, Homestead, FL. 363 pp.

Luo B. and Y Zong. 1988. A new species of CuoraCuora aurocapitata. Acta Herpetologica Sinica 3:1315. (In Chinese with English abstract)

McCord, W. P. and J. B. Iverson. 1991. A new box turof the genus Cuora (Testudines: Emydidae) withtle

taxonomic notes and a key to the species. Herpetologica 47(4):407-420.

Figure 2. A) Ventral view of Cuora pani (male) from
northern Sichuan Province (photo by Ermi Zhao). B)
Lateral view of same individual (Photo by JFP).

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Ermi Zhao for introducing theauthors and facilitating their collaboration. Yuezhao

Wang andregarding

Zhijun Liu provided critical assistancethe acquisition and accession of CIB-9910544. Ron de Bruin and Arie van der Meijden supplied useful informationon the synonymy of Cuora

pani and C. chriskarannarum. Karen Klitz created themap for Fig. 1 and Ted Papenfuss gave editorial assistance.

We thank Jim Buskirk for his help and advice

along the way.

Funding was provided by the Vice

Chancellor's Fellowship of the University of California and Grant # STZ-1-02 of the Chinese Academy ofSciences.

Stubbs, D. 1989. Tortoises and freshwater turtles: anaction plan for their conservation. IUCN/SSC Tortoiseand Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, Canterbury,England. 48 pp.
Pritchard,P.

C. H. 1990. Reviewof:

Turtles of theWorld, by Carl H. Ernst and R. W. Barbour. Copeia
1990:602-607.

Song, M.

T 1984. A new species of the turtle genus

Cuora (testudoformes: Testudinidae) Acta Zootaxcnomica Sinica 9(3):330-332. (In Chinese with Englishabstract)Zhao, E., T Zhou, and P. Ye. 1990. A new Chinese

box turtle (Testudinata: Emydidae )--Cuora zlioui. Pp.
213-216. In E. Zhao (ed.), From Water Onto Land.
Chinese Society for the Study of Amphibians andReptiles, Beijing. (In Chinese with English abstract)