Stegonotus cucullatus
Creators: name: Kaiser, Christine M.
name: Kaiser, Hinrich
name: O'Shea, Mark
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2018
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Reptilia
Squamata
Colubridae
Stegonotus
Stegonotus cucullatus

description: Stegonotus cucullatus (Duméril et al., 1854:376)
Taxonomic status. Valid.
Synonyms. Zamenophis australis Günther, 1872; Lycodon keyensis Doria, 1874; Lycodon magnus Meyer, 1874; Lycodon darnleyensis Macleay, 1877; Herbertophis plumbeus Macleay, 1884; Stegonotus reticulatus Boulenger, 1895.
Original name. Lycodon cucullatum Duméril et al., 1854:376. Species descriptions at the MNHN in the days of the curatorship of André Marie Constant Duméril (Fig. 3B) included sorting and preliminary labeling by the curator, collection management and specimen work by Gabriel Bibron (Fig. 3C), and specimen work and writing by both A.M.C. Duméril and his son Auguste (Fig. 3D). As the title for their description of this taxon, Duméril et al. (1854) used the common name “ Lycodon à Capuchon” [hooded wolfsnake]. The Latin species epithet “ cucullatus ” is a literal translation of the French “ capuchon ” [hood] and was most likely chosen to reflect the contrasting body coloration, with blackish brown on the dorsum and yellowish white on the venter. The species description was presented in French. The image of A.M.C. Duméril (Fig. 3B; public domain) is from an 1845 lithograph by the French illustrator Nicolas Eustache Maurin (1799–1850), that of Gabriel Bibron (Fig. 3C; public domain) is from the posthumous (1853) engraving by Marie Firmin Bocourt (1819–1904) in the atlas to Erpetologie Générale, and that of Auguste Duméril (Fig. 3D; public domain) is an 1863 photograph by the influential French-German photographer Charles Reutlinger (1816–1881).
Holotype. MNHN 3412 (Fig. 5; Table 1), an adult male.
Type locality. “Hâvre Dorey, à la Nouvelle Guinée ” [Doreri Bay, West Papua Province, West New Guinea]; see Comments.
Collection. The primary collectors of amphibians and reptiles on the voyage of La Coquille (1822–25) were Prosper Garnot (1794–1838) and René-Primevère Lesson (1794–1849; Fig. 3E). Garnot and Lesson were part of the medical staff aboard the Coquille on the sixth French voyage of discovery, the former hired as the main surgeon and the latter as the pharmacist, and both were placed in charge of the collection of terrestrial vertebrates (Lescure 2015). Based on the shipping records, the specimen must have been collected between 26 July and 9 August 1824 (Sclater 1886; Lescure 2015). The image of Lesson (Fig. 3E; public domain) is by the French engraver Ambroise Tardieu (1788–1841).
Key characteristics of the holotype. 795 (769) mm SVL + 256 (254) mm TL = 1051 6 (1023) mm TTL. V ♂ = 208 (209), SC ♂ = 93 (91), SCR ♂ = 0.31 (0.30), D = O-17-15 (17-17-15), SL E = 4+5 (4+5), SL = 8 (8), IL = 9 (9), IL G = O (5). Our values compare well to those provided in the redescription of the specimen by Sauvage (1877). The skull of the holotype was removed for detailed examination at an unknown point in the past, which can perhaps account for some of the differences between the original measurement of SVL and our own.
6. The values printed in the original description include 30 mm for head length, 765 mm for body length, 256 mm for TL, and 1051 for TTL.
Key characteristics of the species. The species name cucullatus is one of the names most commonly found on labels of museum specimens of Stegonotus, and it has been applied to Stegonotus populations all across New Guinea and Australia. As a consequence, there is considerable uncertainty over which specimens should actually be considered S. cucullatus sensu stricto, and a detailed analysis of these many specimens is still underway (see Appendix; C. Kaiser et al., in prep.). As a consequence, we are limited in our species-level assessment of S. cucullatus to stating that we expect members of this species to generally possess values of D = 17-17-15, SL E = 4+5, SL = 8, IL = 9, and IL G = 5, with relatively high ventral and subcaudal scale counts (V> 200, SC> 90). However, we caution our readers that values outside of these parameters may, but probably rarely, occur in conspecifics. The male value of SCR = 0.30 in the holotype is relatively high for the genus.
Comments. There has been some confusion about the type locality of S. cucullatus. It appears that the name given as “Hâvre Dorey” by Duméril et al. (1854) was incorrectly interpreted by Cogger et al. (1983) to indicate a port location (i.e., a town). When searching gazetteers or the Internet for a coastal location with this name, the only possibility that emerges is the town of Dore on the south shore of Yapen Island, the southernmost of the islands in the Schouten Archipelago of Cenderawasih Bay. However, there are three important pieces of evidence to prove that this interpretation is incorrect. Firstly, the reports detailing the ports-of-call for the voyage of the exploratory vessel La Coquille do not mention any layovers or stops on the islands of the Schouten Archipelago (Lescure 2015). Secondly, translation of the French term hâvre into English may also indicate a bay, and the inlet properly known as Doreri Bay 7 leads to the settlement now known as Manokwari, a significant coastal town on the Bird’s Head Peninsula of West Papua Province. Thirdly, and perhaps most famously, this location was listed as comprising Dorey Harbor and Dorey Village by Alfred Russel Wallace in his groundbreaking book The Malay Archipelago (Wallace 1869). Wallace devoted part of Chapter 34 to describing the location and included it in the detailed map accompanying the book. Based on the biogeography of the region, it therefore appears that S. cucullatus could be a regional Bird’s Head endemic species with a limited range, a distinct possibility as evidenced by patterns of distribution for recently described Stegonotus species (e.g., Ruane et al. 2017), or it could be a more widely distributed species similar to the elapid Micropechis ikaheca, whose type locality is also “le havre de Doréry” (Lesson 1830 8) and whose distribution does not appear to be restricted by topography (e.g., Warrell et al. 1996: Fig. 4).
description: Published as part of Kaiser, Christine M., Kaiser, Hinrich & O'Shea, Mark, 2018, The taxonomic history of Indo-Papuan groundsnakes, genus Stegonotus Duméril et al., 1854 (Colubridae), with some taxonomic revisions and the designation of a neotype for S. parvus (Meyer, 1874), pp. 1-73 in Zootaxa 4512 (1) on pages 12-14, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4512.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/2607575