You are here » home › advanced search › Corallus cookii

Corallus cookii GRAY, 1842

iNaturalist logo

Can you confirm these amateur observations of Corallus cookii?

Add your own observation of
Corallus cookii »

We have no photos, try to find some by Google images search: Google images

Higher TaxaBoidae (Boinae), Henophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes)
Subspecies 
Common NamesE: Saint Vincent Treeboa 
SynonymCorallus Cookii GRAY 1842: 42
Corallus hortulanus Melanea GRAY 1849: 98
Corallus cookii — BOULENGER 1893: 99
Boa cooki — IHERING 1911: 317
Boa enydris cookii — STULL 1935: 388
Boa enydris cookii — BEEBE 1946: 17
Corallus enydris cookii — FORCART 1951
Corallus hortulanus cookii — ROZE 1966: 61
Corallus enhydris cookii — WELCH 1994: 17
Corallus cookii — HENDERSON 1997
Corallus cookii — HENDERSON 1999
Corallus hortulanus — MCDIARMID, CAMPBELL & TOURÉ 1999: 191
Corallus cookii — WALLACH et al. 2014: 183
Corallus cookii — REYNOLDS & HENDERSON 2018: 17 
DistributionSt. Vincent (Antilles)

Type locality: "West Indies"; restricted to “St. Vincent” by Henderson 1997: 210  
Reproductionovovivparous 
TypesHolotype: BMNH 1946.1.1.50, male 
DiagnosisDiagnosis: Corallus cooki is most easily distinguished from other members of the C. hortulanus complex by its color pattern. It lacks the color variation (pale yellow, orange, red, many shades of brown) found in C. hortulanus and C. grenadensis. Likewise, the main element of the dorsal pattern is relatively constant, and it rarely occurs in populations outside of St. Vincent. The diamond-shape pattern characteristic of C. ruschenbergerii does not occur in this species. Corallus cooki is distinguishable from C. hortulanus by maximum number of dorsal scale rows: invariably less than 50 in C. cooki (39–48; x = 43.9 +/- 0.34) and almost always more than 50 in C. hortulanus (47– 63; x = 55.0 +/- 0.17; specimens with less than 50 occur occasionally in Guyana, Suriname, Bolivia, and Peru) [from HENDERSON 1997]. 
CommentDistribution: [Corallus enydris cooki] “Costa Rica to Colombia and Venezuela; Trinidad and Tobago; St. Vincent, Grenadines, and Grenada” according to SCHWARTZ & HENDERSON (1991) but restricted to St. Vincent by HENDERSON (1997).

Synonymy: C. cooki is nested within hortulanus and thus may be a synonym of the latter (Colston et al. 2013). 
EtymologyGray's description merely gives the name "Edw. Cooke, Esq." Beolens et al. 2011: 58 believe this to be Edward William C90ke (1811-1880), an English artist who was most famed as a marine painter.  
References
  • Beebe, William 1946. Field notes on the snakes of Kartabo, British Guiana, and Caripito, Venezuela. Zoologica 31: 11-52 - get paper here
  • Beolens, Bo; Michael Watkins, and Michael Grayson 2011. The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, USA - get paper here
  • Blumberg, A. 1983. Erfahrungen bei der Haltung von Corallus enydris cooki und Corallus enydris enydris. Sauria 5 (3): 5-13 - get paper here
  • Boulenger, G.A. 1893. Catalogue of the snakes in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) I. London (Taylor & Francis), 448 pp. - get paper here
  • Colston, Timothy J.; Felipe G. Grazziotin, Donald B. Shepard, Laurie J. Vitt, Guarino R. Colli, Robert W. Henderson, S. Blair Hedges, Sandro Bonatto, Hussam Zaher, Brice P. Noonan, Frank T. Burbrink 2013. Molecular systematics and historical biogeography of tree boas (Corallus spp.). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 66 (3): 953-959 - get paper here
  • Forcart, L. 1951. Nomenclature Remarks on Some Generic Names of the Snake Family Boidae. Herpetologica 7: 197-199 - get paper here
  • Gray, J. E. 1842. Synopsis of the species of prehensile-tailed snakes, or family Boidae. Zoological Miscellany 2: 41-46
  • Gray, J. E. 1849. Catalogue of the specimens of snakes in the collection of the British Museum. Edward Newman, London, i-xv; 1-125. - get paper here
  • Henderson, R. W. 2002. Neotropical Treeboas. Krieger Publ. Company, Malabar, 198 pp.
  • Henderson, R. W. 2015. Neotropical Treeboas - Natural History of the Corallus hortulanus Complex. Edition Chimaira. ISBN 9783899734386. 338 pp.
  • Henderson, Robert W. 1997. A Taxonomic Review of the Corallus hortulanus Complex of Neotropical Tree Boas. Carib. J. Sci. 33 (3-4): 198-221.
  • Henderson, Robert W. and Michael J. Pauers 2012. On the Diets of Neotropical Treeboas (Squamata: Boidae: Corallus). South American J. Herp. 7 (2): 172-180. - get paper here
  • Henderson, Robert W.; Michael J. Pauers and Timothy J. Colston 2013. On the congruence of morphology, trophic ecology, and phylogeny in Neotropical treeboas (Squamata: Boidae: Corallus). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 109: 466–475. doi: 10.1111/bij.12052 - get paper here
  • Henderson,R.W. 1997. An irascible aerialist - The common tree boa of the American tropics. Fauna 1 (1): 17-25
  • Ihering, R. von 1911. As cobras do Brazil. Primeira parte. Rev. Mus. Paulista 8 (1910): 273-379 - get paper here
  • Knox, Andrew and Kate Jackson 2010. Ecological and phylogenetic influences on maxillary dentition in snakes. Phyllomedusa 9 (2): 121-131 - get paper here
  • McDiarmid, R.W.; Campbell, J.A. & Touré,T.A. 1999. Snake species of the world. Vol. 1. [type catalogue] Herpetologists’ League, 511 pp.
  • Reynolds, R. Graham and Robert W. Henderson 2018. Boas of the World (Superfamily Booidae): A Checklist With Systematic, Taxonomic, and Conservation Assessments. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology Sep 2018, Vol. 162, No. 1: 1-58. - get paper here
  • REYNOLDS, ROBERT GRAHAM; ROBERT W. HENDERSON, LUIS M. DÍAZ, TOMÁS M. RODRÍGUEZ-CABRERA AND ALBERTO R. PUENTE-ROLÓN 2023. Boas of the West Indies Comstock Publishing / Cornell U Press - get paper here
  • Roze, J. A. 1966. La Taxonomía y Zoogeografla de los Ofidios de Venezuela. Univ. Central Venezuela, 362 pp.
  • Stull, O.G. 1935. A Checklist of the Family Boidae. Proc. Boston Soc. nat. Hist., 40: 387—408.
  • Thorpe, R.S. 2022. Reptiles of the Lesser Antilles. Chimaira, Frankfurt, 608 pp. - get paper here
  • Wallach, Van; Kenneth L. Williams , Jeff Boundy 2014. Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. [type catalogue] Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, 1237 pp.
  • Welch, K. R. G. 1994. Snakes of the World. A Checklist. 2. Boas, Pythons, Shield-tails and Worm Snakes. KCM Books, Somerset, England, 89 pp.
 
External links  
Is it interesting? Share with others:


Please submit feedback about this entry to the curator