Asiatic Herpetological ResearchFebruary 1992

FirstVol. 4, pp. 3-mT|

Records of the Pipe Snake (Cylindrophis) in China

Kraig Adler Ermi Zhao2 and Ilya S. Darevsky 31,^Cornell University, Neurobiology and Behavior, Seeley G. MuddHall, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA
2Chengdu Institute of Biology, P.O. Box 416, Chengdu, Sichuan, China^Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg 199034, Russia

Abstract. -Cylindrophis ruffus (Laurenti, 1768), the red-tail pipe snake, previously known from Burmathrough Indochina and the East Indies, is reported from three localities in southern China (Hainan, HongKong, and Xiamen). These are the first Chinese records for this snake family (Aniliidae or Uropeltidae,according to different classifications). Justification is given for spelling the specific epithet ruffus and notrufus.

Key words: Reptilia, Serpentes, snakes, Aniliidae, Uropeltidae, Cylindrophis, China, Indochina.

Introduction

The genus Cylindrophis is comprised ofeight species of snakes distributed in SriLanka and from Burma through Indochina
and the East Indies. Until now, there wereno records for China. Historically, thisgenus has been placed in the primitive

about 50 km from the western border ofChina's Yunnan Province. The species isalso known from northern Thailand:
Chiang Mai in the northwest and Sakon
Nakhon in the northeast (Cox, pers.

comm.). Deuve (1970) reported C. ruffus
from several localities in western Laos as
far north as Vientiane.
Bourret (1935)

family Aniliidae (e.g., Goin et al., 1978;
Rieppel, 1979; Underwood, 1967), which
also includes Anomochilus of western
Malaysia and Sumatra, and Anilius ofSouth America; Loxocemus of Mexico andCentral America is sometimes also included

described four specimens in the collectionof the University of Hanoi, but none ofthese has precise locality data; there are no
recent records from northern Vietnam (TranMcDowell (1975, 1987),

Our new records are from three widely-

however, separated the two Asian genera
from the Aniliidae, and placed them in thesubfamily Cylindropheinae of the family

separated localities in southern China (seeFig. 1), as follows:

Uropeltidae, which includes the shieldtailed snakes (subfamily Uropeltinae), a
group of seven genera of burrowing snakes

Xiamen (AmoyFujian Province:
Department of Biology, Xiamen
University, two unnumbered specimens,
collected at Xiamen by a farmer who dug
them out of the soil, date unknown butin this family.

restricted to Sri Lanka and peninsular India.

Chinese Recordsetal., 1981).

Island);prior to 1969.

We wish to report the first specimens ofHainan Province: Hainan, no further

genus (and family) from China. All
appear to be referrable to the most widelydistributed species in the genus,

Petersburg

Zoological Institute, St.
(Leningrad), (ZIN 7509),
collected in 1888 by Alfred Otto Herz.

Cylindrophis ruffus (Laurenti, 1768),
which ranges from Burma to Vietnam,
south through peninsular Malaysia andHong Kong: No further locality data;
Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ),

thisIndonesia (Fig. 1). The published records
nearest to China are for Bhamo, Burma(Boulenger, 1888) and Myitkyina, Burma(Wall, 1926), both of which localities are

1992 by Asiatic Herpetological Research

localitydata;

Harvard University, (MCZ 5489), collectedby a "Capt. Muller," and received in
exchange with Peabody Museum, Salem,in 1886.

Vol. 4, p. 38

Asiatic Herpetological ResearchFebruary 1992';
u".UojjPJJegF

Pal»waU
fpfraitzs"

B.d*l>'"

cS 'ir/flm^'^

FIG. 1. Distribution of Cylindrophis ruffus in Indochina and southern China. The range extends throughIndonesia (including Sumatra, Java, and Borneo) as far east as the Celebes and nearby Batjan and Sangiheislands. The new localities in China are Hainan, Hong Kong, and Xiamen (arrows). There are no known
authentic records from northern Vietnam. The dashed line indicates the northernmost limit of the South
China Biogeographic Region. (Base map adapted from New York Times Atlas of the World, 1985).
All of these localities are in that part ofChina designated,on biogeographicgrounds, as the "South China Region"(China Natural Geography Editorial Board,1979), an area in southern China that
extends from western Yunnan eastward toFujian Province and includes Hainan andTaiwan (Fig. 1). These records are all themore surprising since this part of China has
been collected by herpetologists for many
decades. Clifford H. Pope and Malcolm A.
Smith failed to find Cylindrophis during
their extensive field work in Hainan in the1920s, and Rudolf Mell, who resided in
Canton (=Guangzhou) from 1908 to 1921
and made comprehensive collections fromsouthern China, never found it.
It isunreported in Fujian by Ting and Zheng(1974) in their survey of the snakes of thatprovince and also from Hong Kong

(Karsen et al., 1986; Romer, 1979). It is
possible, of course, that our specimensfrom Hainan and Hong Kong, being oldrecords and without precise locality data,
merely were shipped from these places andthespecimens actually originatedelsewhere, but the newer records fromFujian, even further north along theChinese coast and more distant from themain range of the species, are undoubtedlyauthentic.

On geographic grounds, the Chinese
specimens are referrable to the nominate
subspecies, C. r. ruffus. For the record,
we provide some meristic data for theFebruary 1992

TABLE 1.

Asiatic Herpetological Research

Meristic data for the Hainan Island andHong Kong Calamaria.

Vol. 4, p. 39

Vol. 4, p. 40

Asiatic Herpetological Researchwhen exposed, but flatten the entire bodyand curl the posterior end of the body andthe tail over the body, thus exposing thebright red bands on their ventral surface
Persons collecting in(Fig. 2B-C).
southern China, including Taiwan, shouldmake a special effort to look for this snake.
Correct Spelling of ruffus

February 1992

preserved unless it contravenes provisionsof Articles 27-31 {ruffus does not) or thereis evidence in the original publication of an
inadvertent error (there is none). Thus,is the correct
original
sense of the Code. The
Code makes no explicit statement about
doubling of consonants, but in passim there
are several instances of such names used asexamples in that book.

"Anguis ruffa"

spelling in theLaurenti (1768, p. 71) originally named
thistaxon Anguis

ruffa (twofs).

DIAGN. Corpore aequali,Anguis ruffa.
lineisruffo,interruptis;

transversalibus

abdomine

Surinami;vario.

hospitatur
,yin

albis

HabitatMuseo

Gronoviano,

or in translation, "[Species]138.

ruffa.

AnguisDiagnosis. Body
uniform, red, broken white transverse
Lives inbands; abdomen various.

Surinam; housed in Gronovius'sMuseum." The description apparently isbased on Anguis species number 6 inGronovius (1756,details

arep.

given.

54),

whereGmelin

fuller(1789)

apparently was the first to cite Laurenti's
new species, which he called Anguis rufus(one f). Wagler (1828) associated thisspecies with his new genus Cylindrophis,
although he called his new species C.

resplendens, now regarded as a synonymof ruffus. There can be little question that
Laurenti intended the spelling with two fs
and not as emended by Gmelin. Laurenti
used the two-f spelling twice in hisdescription (in both printings of the book;for details of these editions, see Adler,
1989, pp. 12-13) and this spelling was notcorrected on his errata page. In classical
Latin, rufus is invariably spelled with asingle /, which probably led to Gmelin's
emendation.
However, in late Latin
andinscriptions
manuscripts, doubling ofconsonants was often used to preserve thelength of the preceding vowel, here a longfor purposes of pronunciationu,(Grandgent,thus, the alternatea perfectly acceptable1907);
isAcknowledgments

His

original description is brief: "CXXXVIII.

spelling ruffus
form. Laurenti, in fact, routinely doubled
consonants before and after vowels in thenames of species throughout his book. TheInternational Code (1985, article 32) statesthat an author's original spelling must beWe thank Pere Alberch and Jose Rosado(Museumof Comparative Zoology,Harvard University) for loaning us theHongspecimen and some
The USA National

Kong

comparative material.

Academyof Scienceshas

supported

Adler's and Zhao's research on the Chinese

herpetofauna, throughitsCommittee on

Scientific Communication with the People's

Republic of China. Peter K. Knoefel andFrederick M. Ahl provided advice
concerning classical Latin and Merel J. Cox
helped to delineate the range of C. ruffus inThailand.
David M. Dennis kindly
thesupplied
photographs of living pipesnakes.

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