Wallophis brachyura (GÜNTHER, 1866)
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Wallophis brachyura
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| Higher Taxa | Colubridae, Colubrinae, Colubroidea, Caenophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes) |
| Subspecies | |
| Common Names | E: Indian Smooth Snake G: Indische Glattnatter Gujarati: Suvaro saap (Desai 2011, 2017) |
| Synonym | Zamenis brachyurus GÜNTHER 1866: 27 Coronella brachyura — BOULENGER 1890 Coronella brachyura — SMITH 1943: 195 Wallophis brachyurus — WELCH Coronella brachyurus — DAS 1996: 55 Coronella brachyura — SHARMA 2004 Coronella brachyura — WALLACH et al. 2014: 186 Wallophis brachyurus — MIRZA & PATEL 2017 Wallophis brachyura — PATEL & VYAS 2019 Coronella brachyura — PARMAR 2019 Wallophis brachyura — DEEPAK et al. 2021 |
| Distribution | India (Maharashtra, S/C Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana) Type locality: “Poona” [= Pune, Maharashtra] |
| Reproduction | oviparous |
| Types | Type: BMNH 1946.1.1.24 (and possibly additional specimens). |
| Diagnosis | Diagnosis (genus Wallophis): A medium-sized snake reaching an average SVL of 435mm (322–552mm) with a distinctly short tail in relation to its SVL (TL/SVL 0.11–0.17). Scales in 25 rows at neck, which drop to 23 rows in 1.5% of ventrals, second reduction is seen at 57.4% of ventrals and the last reduction at 58.3%. Scale reduction is lateral (third and fourth rows uniting) and no increase in the number of scale rows is seen posterior to the neck. Head scalation is complete and is typical of the family Colubridae as follows: eight to nine supralabials, fourth and fifth labial touching eye (rarely fifth and sixth); nine to ten infralabials; one loreal; one large preocular nearly reaching upper surface of the head; two postoculars; 2þ2 temporals; two large parietals, a large bell-shaped frontal with a wide base; rostral broad, reaching upper surface of the head. Presubocular is absent. It has ventrals 200–237 and 43–54 subcaudals, anal shield entire. Posterior maxillary teeth is the largest and with an evident diastema between them and anterior teeth. Hemipenis extend to the 13th caudal plate, not forked, distal half is calcyulate, the cups being larger and with scalloped edges. Wallophis differs from most members of the Western Palearctic clade lacking a presubocular scale (compared to that present in Platyceps, Hemorrhois, Lytorhynchus, Spalerosophis, Hemerophis, Dolichophis, Hierophis, Eirenis, Coluber, and Lytorhynchus and Wallaceophis). In bearing lateral scale reductions, Wallophis differs from Spalerosophis and Wallaceophis, which possess dorsal scale reductions. Scales in 23 rows at mid-dorsum (vs. 17–20 in Eirenis, 17 in Hierophis, >25 scales rows in Spalerosophis, 19 rows in Lytorhynchus). Based on concatenated fragments of nuclear and two mitochondrial genes, Wallophis is recovered as a sister taxon of Wallaceophis from which it differs in an uncorrected p-distance of 17% for ND4 gene (Table 1) apart from the morphological characters discussed earlier. [from Mirza & Patel 2017] |
| Comment | Synonymy: Wallophis was revived in a non-peer reviewed journal (Litteratura Serpentium), without adequate justification (by Ken Welch) and more recently by Mirza & Patel 2017. Although Mirza & Patel provided a diagnosis for Wallophis they did not include any other members of Coronella or relatives of Wallophis in their molecular analysis although DNA sequences are available. Phylogenetically, brachyura is only distantly related to Coronella (see, e.g. the phylogeny in Zaher et al. 2019) and thus needs a different name. Similar species: Wallaceophis gujaratensis, Argyrogena fasciolata, Platyceps ventromaculatus, hatchlings of Xenochrophis piscator (Parmar 2019). |
| Etymology | The species was named after the relatively short tail, from Greek “brachys” = short, and oura = tail. Coronella is a Latin word meaning “small crown,” in reference to the pattern around the head of snake. Brachyura is modern Latin from the Greek words brachys, “short,” and oura, “tail” (Wiktionary 2017). The full name means a snake with a small crown-like pattern on head and a short tail. Its vernacular name in Gujarati (Suvaro saap) means “smooth” or “silky” (Suvaro) and saap means “snake.” (Parmar 2019). |
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