Elaphe taeniura Cope 1861
Creators: name: Dau, Vinh Quang
name: Hoang, Thao Ngoc
name: Nguyen, Truong Quang
name: Pham, Anh Van
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Squamata
Colubridae
Elaphe
Elaphe taeniura

description: Elaphe taeniura Cope, 1861
Materials
Type status: Other material. Occurrence: catalogNumber: HDU 6056; individualCount: 1; sex: female; lifeStage: adult; occurrenceID: 053D4A76-8439-514A-9AD2-78CA776C6943; Taxon: scientificNameID: Elaphe taeniura; scientificName: Elaphe taeniura; class: Reptilia; order: Squamata; family: Colubridae; genus: Elaphe; specificEpithet: taeniura; scientificNameAuthorship: Cope, 1861; Location: country: Vietnam; countryCode: VN; stateProvince: Thanh Hoa; county: Thanh Hoa; municipality: Ba Thuoc; locality: Near Thanh Son Commune; verbatimElevation: 1006 m; verbatimLatitude: 20 ° 48335 ’ N; verbatimLongitude: 105 ° 09964 ' E; verbatimCoordinateSystem: WGS 84; Event: eventDate: Ortober; eventTime: 2024; eventRemarks: collected by V. Q. Dau and T. N. Thao; Record Level: language: en; collectionCode: Reptilia; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen
Description
Morphological characters of the specimen from Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, agreed with the descriptions of Smith (1943) and Schulz (2010): SVL 506 mm, TaL 127 mm (n = 1). Body cylindrical; head moderately distinct from neck; eye large, pupil round; rostral as broad as high, visible from above; internasals broad larger than long; prefrontal about two-thirds of frontal; parietals as long as wide; nasal divided; loreal 1 / 1; preoculars 2 / 2; postoculars 3 / 3, bordering anterior temporals; anterior temporals 1 / 1; posterior temporals 2 / 2; supralabials 9 / 9, fifth and sixth touching the eye, eighth-largest; infralabials 12 / 12, first to sixth bordering chin shields; dorsal scale rows 25–25 – 21, keeled from the eighth row, laterally smooth; ventrals 275; cloacal scale divided; subcaudals 112, paired.
Colouration in preservative. Dorsal surface of head and body brownish above, the head and neck uniform, with a black stripe on each side of the head, broadest behind the eye; anterior part of the back with a vertebral series of large black butterfly-shaped spots and smaller diamond-shaped ones on lateral; posterior part of back with a pale grey vertebral stripe, 3 or 4 scales wide and a broad black stripe on each side, 6 scales wide; this interrupted by light spots or transverse bars as far as the vent; ventral yellowish, with black spots in the outer margins. Tail black with four light stripes extending along each of the lateral, vertebral and ventral (Fig. 3).
Distribution
In Vietnam, this is a widespread species known, from Lao Cai and Cao Bang Provinces in the north, southwards to Kon Tum and Gia Lai Provinces (Nguyen et al. 2009). This species is also known from India, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Myanmar, W Malaysia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Japan (Uetz et al. 2024).
Type locality: China: Zhejiang, Ningbo; Ningpo and Siam; Siam, Ningpo (Uetz et al. 2024).
Ecology
The subadult was found at 20: 00 h on the forest floor. The surrounding habitat was evegreen forest.
description: Published as part of Dau, Vinh Quang, Hoang, Thao Ngoc, Nguyen, Truong Quang & Pham, Anh Van, 2024, New records and an updated list of reptiles from Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, pp. e 134976 in Biodiversity Data Journal 12 on page e134976, DOI: 10.3897/BDJ.12.e134976