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Boiga dightoni (BOULENGER, 1894)

IUCN Red List - Boiga dightoni - Data Deficient, DD
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Higher TaxaColubridae, Colubrinae, Colubroidea, Caenophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes)
Subspecies 
Common NamesE: Pirmad Cat Snake
E: Whitaker's cat snake [ 
SynonymDipsas dightoni BOULENGER 1894
Dipsadomorphus dightoni — BOULENGER 1896
Boiga dightoni — SMITH 1943: 359
Boiga dightoni — INGER et al. 1984: 567
Boiga dightoni — DAS 1996: 54
Boiga dightoni — GROEN 2008
Boiga dightoni — WALLACH et al. 2014: 103
Boiga dightoni — GANESH et al. 2020
Boiga whitakeri GANESH, MALLIK, ACHYUTHAN, SHANKER & VOGEL 2021
Boiga dightoni — NARAYANAN et al. 2023 
DistributionIndia (Kerala)

Type locality: "Pirmaad, at an altitude of 3,300 feet."

whitakeri: India (Southern Western Ghats: Tamil Nadu, Kerala: Devarmalai and Agasthyamalai hills); Type locality: Devar Malai (9.173N, 77.261E; 1020 m asl), Tirunelveli dt., Tamil Nadu.  
Reproductionoviparous 
TypesHolotype: BMNH 1946.1.1.32, an 1100 mm female (S. Dighton, Jan. 1893).
Holotype: BNHS 3597 (ex. CESS 255) an adult male collected in 2011; Paratype: BNHS 1863 coll. K.G. Adiyodi, from Pullompara, Ernakulam dt., Kerala, in June 1961 [whitakeri] 
DiagnosisDiagnosis: A species of Boiga endemic to the Southern Western Ghats of India, characterised by the following combination of characters: 21–23 midbody scale rows (vs. 19 in B. ceylonensis, B. thackerayi, B. beddomei, B. flaviviridis); vertebral scales strongly enlarged (vs. mildly enlarged in B. barnesii); venter with salmon pink spots in life (vs. yellowish in B. thackerayi, B. flaviviridis; variable in B. andamanensis; dorsum predominantly uniform brown (vs. green in B. flaviviridis; variable in B. andamanensis); ventrolateral pattern with salmon pinkish markings (vs. with alternate white and black blotches in B. barnesii, B. thackerayi; without any pattern in B. andamanensis, B. flaviviridis); temporal subequal to coastal body scale (vs. larger than coastal body scale in B. nuchalis) (from Ganesh et al. 2020).


Additional details (4705 characters) are available for collaborators and contributors. Please contact us for details. 
CommentHabitat: fully arboreal (Harrington et al. 2018).

Synonymy: Narayanan et al. 2023 synonymized B. whitakeri with B. dightoni. 
EtymologyNamed after the collector of the holotype, “Mr. S. Dighton at Pirmaad”, most likely identical with S. M. Dighton, a tea planter at Travancore, Kerala (1888).

B. whitakeri was named after the eminent Indian herpetologist Romulus Earl Whitaker (b. 1943-). 
References
  • Beolens, Bo; Michael Watkins, and Michael Grayson 2011. The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, USA - get paper here
  • Blackburn, D.G. 1993. STANDARDIZED CRITERIA FOR THE RECOGNITION OF REPRODUCTIVE MODES IN SQUAMATE REPTILES. Herpetologica 49 (1): 118-132 - get paper here
  • Boulenger, G.A. 1894. Description of a new snake found in Travancore, by Mr. S. Dighton. Pirmaad. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. viii: 528 - get paper here
  • Boulenger, G.A. 1896. Catalogue of the snakes in the British Museum, Vol. 3. London (Taylor & Francis), xiv + 727 pp. - get paper here
  • Darko, Y.A.; Voss, O. & Uetz, P. 2022. A dictionary of abbreviations used in reptile descriptions. Zootaxa 5219 (5): 421–432 - get paper here
  • GANESH, S., MALLIK, A. K., ACHYUTHAN, N., SHANKER, K., & VOGEL, G. 2021. A new species of Boiga (Serpentes: Colubridae) from the Southern Western Ghats of India with a molecular phylogeny and expanded characterisation of related species. Zootaxa 4981 (3): 449-468 - get paper here
  • GANESH, S.R.; N.S. ACHYUTHAN, S.R. CHANDRAMOULI & GERNOT VOGEL, 2020. Taxonomic revision of the Boiga ceylonensis group (Serpentes: Colubridae): re-examination of type specimens, redefinition of nominate taxa and an updated key. Zootaxa 4779 (3): 301–332 - get paper here
  • Groen,J. 2008. Het Boiga-genus. Lacerta 66 (1-3): 64-79 - get paper here
  • 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
  • Inger, Robert F.;Shaffer, H. Bradley;Koshy, Mammen;Bakde, Ramesh 1984. A report on a collection of amphibians and reptiles from the Ponmudi, Kerala, South India. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 81 (3): 551-570 - get paper here
  • Kanagavel, Arun; S.R. Ganesh 2021. Recent record of the rare Travancore Catsnake, Boiga dightoni (Boulenger 1894) (Reptilia: Colubridae), from the Ponmudi Hills in the southern Western Ghats, India. Reptiles & Amphibians 28 (1): 67-70 - get paper here
  • Narayanan S, Das S, Anvar YM, Tillack F, Mohapatra PP, Gower DJ, Rajkumar KP, Deepak V 2023. On the taxonomic validity of Boiga whitakeri Ganesh et al., 2021 with new insights on Boiga dightoni (Boulenger, 1894) (Reptilia: Squamata: Colubridae). Vertebrate Zoology 73: 1-21 - get paper here
  • Orlov, Nikolai L. and Sergei A. Ryabov 2002. A new species of the genus Boiga (Serpentes, Colubridae, Colubrinae) from Tanahjampea Island and description of "black form" of Boiga cynodon Complex from Sumatra (Indonesia). Russ. J. Herpetol. 9 (1): 33-56 - get paper here
  • Palot, M.J. 2015. A checklist of reptiles of Kerala, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 7(13): 8010–8022 - get paper here
  • Sharma, R. C. 2004. Handbook Indian Snakes. AKHIL BOOKS, New Delhi, 292 pp.
  • Smith, M.A. 1943. The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, Including the Whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region. Reptilia and Amphibia. 3 (Serpentes). Taylor and Francis, London. 583 pp.
  • 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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