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Telescopus tessellatus (WALL, 1908)

IUCN Red List - Telescopus tessellatus - Least Concern, LC
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Higher TaxaColubridae, Colubrinae, Colubroidea, Caenophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes)
Subspecies 
Common NamesE: Soosan Tiger Snake 
SynonymTarbophis tessellatus WALL 1908: 802
Tarbophis iberus BOULENGER 1920
Tarbophis tessellatus — BARBOUR & AMARAL 1927
Tarbophis fallax iberus CORKILL 1932
Tarbophis martini SCHMIDT 1939: 84
Telescopus tessellatus martini ANDERSON 1963
Telescopus tessellatus martini — LEVITON et al. 1992: 108
Tarbophis tessellatus — DAS & CHATURVEDI 1998
Telescopus tessellatus martini — RASTEGAR-POUYANI et al. 2008
Telescopus tessellatus tessellatus — RASTEGAR-POUYANI et al. 2008
Telescopus tessellatus — WALLACH et al. 2014: 713 
DistributionIran, Iraq

martini: Iran

tessellatus: Iran; Type locality: “Maidan Mihaftan 30 m. E. of Shushtar in S.W. Persia [...] between the Zagros mountains and the vast flat plains of Persian Mesopotamia”.  
Reproductionoviparous 
TypesHolotype: BNHS = BNHM 2665
Holotype: FMNH 28319 [martini] 
DiagnosisDiagnosis (martini, n=10 ?). A Tarbophis similar to the fallax formenkreis in coloration, distinguished by having the dorsal scales uniformly in 21 rows and by a greater number of ventrals; the loreal enters the eye, and the anal may be entire or divided. (Schmidt 1939)


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CommentVenomous, but usually not dangerous to humans.

Habitat: partly arboreal (Harrington et al. 2018). 
EtymologyPresumably named after the Latin tesselatus (mosaic), in reference to the arrangement of the scales. 
References
  • Anderson, S.C. 1963. Amphibians and Reptiles from Iran. Proc. Cal. Acad. Sci. Ser. 4, 31(16): 417-498 - get paper here
  • Barbour, T.; Amaral, A. D. 1927. Studies on African Ophidia. Bull. Antivenin Inst. America 1 (1): 25-27
  • Das, Indraneil;Chaturvedi, Naresh 1998. Catalogue of the herpetological types in the collection of the Bombay Natural History Society. Hamadryad 23 (2): 150-156 - get paper here
  • Fathnia, B.; N. Rastegar Pouyani; H. Darvishnia; M. Rajabzadeh 2010. The snake fauna of Ilam Province, southwestern Iran. Iranian Journal of Animal Biosystematics 6 (1) - get paper here
  • Geniez, Philippe 2018. Snakes of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Princeton University Press, 384 pp. - get paper here
  • Habeeb, Israa Nadhim & Nasrullah Rastegar-Pouyani 2016. Geographical distribution of the snakes of Iraq. Mesopotamia Environmental Journal 2 (3): 67-77
  • Harrington, Sean M; Jordyn M de Haan, Lindsey Shapiro, Sara Ruane 2018. Habits and characteristics of arboreal snakes worldwide: arboreality constrains body size but does not affect lineage diversification. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 125 (1): 61–71 - get paper here
  • Kamali, Kamran 2020. A Field Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Iran. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (www.chimaira.de). 574 pp.
  • Leviton,A.E.; Anderson,S.C.; Adler, K.; Minton,S.A. 1992. Handbook to Middle East Amphibians and Reptiles. SSAR, Oxford, Ohio (Contr. to Herpetol. No. 8), 1-252
  • Nilson, Göran and Nasrullah Rastegar-Pouyani 2013. The occurence of Telescopus nigriceps (Ahl, 1924) in western Iran, with comments on the genus Telescopus (Serpentes: Colubridae). Zoology in the Middle East 59 (2): 131-135 - get paper here
  • Rajabizadeh, M. 2018. Snakes of Iran. [in Farsi] Tehran: Iranshenasi, 496 pp. [2017 ?] - get paper here
  • RASTEGAR-POUYANI, NASRULLAH; HAJI GHOLI KAMI, MEHDI RAJABZADEH, SOHEILA SHAFIEI AND STEVEN CLEMENT ANDERSON 2008. Annotated Checklist of Amphibians and Reptiles of Iran. Iranian Journal of Animal Biosystematics 4 (1): 7-30
  • Schmidt,K.P. 1939. Reptiles and amphibians from Southwestern Asia. Publ. Field Mus. nat. Hist., zool. Ser., 24: 49-92 - get paper here
  • Šmíd, J., Göçmen, B., Crochet, P.-A., Trape, J.-F., Mazuch, T., Uvizl, M., & Nagy, Z. T. 2019. Ancient diversification, biogeography, and the role of climatic niche evolution in the Old World cat snakes (Colubridae, Telescopus). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution - get paper here
  • Wall,F. 1908. Notes on a collection of snakes from Persia. J. Bombay nat. Hist. Soc. 18: 795-805 - 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.
 
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