Lycodon tristrigatus (GÜNTHER, 1858)
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Lycodon tristrigatus
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| Higher Taxa | Colubridae, Colubrinae, Colubroidea, Caenophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes) |
| Subspecies | |
| Common Names | |
| Synonym | Dryocalamus tristrigatus GÜNTHER 1858 Dryocalamus tristrigatus — BOULENGER 1893: 372 Dryocalamus tristigatus — MURPHY et al. 1994 (in error) Dryocalamus tristrigatus — WALLACH et al. 2014: 249 Lycodon tristrigatus — FIGUEROA et al. 2016 Dryocalamus tristrigatus — WICKRAMASINGHE et al. 2020 |
| Distribution | South-East Asia, Sunda region, Indonesia: Natuna Islands and Borneo (Sabah, Sarawak). Type locality: Unknown (WALLACH et al. 2014) |
| Reproduction | oviparous |
| Types | Holotype: BMNH 1946.1.13.78 |
| Diagnosis | Diagnosis (Dryocalamus): Members of the genus Dryocalamus are distinct from those of Lycodon sensu Figueroa et al. (2016) by having broad and keeled ventrals which are raised on the sides (vs. smooth, lacking a keel, with the sides only slightly raised or not at all, including in L. aulicus, the type species of Lycodon). The combination of the following morphological characters too, clearly distinguishes Dryocalamus from Lycodon s.s.: head oval, wider than body, depressed (vs. elongate, depressed); body slender, with an even girth throughout (vs. elongate, cylindrical); costal scales at midbody 13–15 (vs. 17 or more) (de Silva 1980), and we have also observed that members of Dryocalamus have eyes clearly protruding from head profile in dorsal aspect (vs. not protruding) (Wickramasinghe et al. 2020). |
| Comment | Type species: Dryocalamus tristrigatus GÜNTHER 1858 is the type species of the genus Dryocalamus GÜNTHER 1858. Synonymy: Figueroa et al. 2016 synonymized Dryocalamus with Lycodon. Dryocalamus is nested within Lycodon (also see the pylogenetic tree in Wostl et al. 2017), hence the Philippine Lycodon must be moved to a new genus or Dryocalamus synonymized with Lycodon. Although Wickramasinghe et al. 2020 argued that Dryocalamus should remain, citing Zaher et al. 2019, the latter authors confirmed that Dryocalamus nests within Lycodon. Diet: Dryocalamus exhibit a unique feeding behavior, their diet consisting exclusively of eggs, in which it consumes only the egg embryo, omitting the egg shell (Melvinselvan et al. 2018), whereas Lycodon consumes whole eggs and also small reptiles. Habitat: partly arboreal (Harrington et al. 2018) while most of Lycodon species are terrestrial. |
| Etymology | Named after Latin tri- = three, and striga = stripe. |
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