Inyoka swazicus (SCHAEFER, 1970)
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Inyoka swazicus
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| Higher Taxa | Lamprophiidae, Colubroidea, Caenophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes) |
| Subspecies | |
| Common Names | E: Swazi Rock Snake, Swaziland House Snake G: Swasiland-Hausschlange |
| Synonym | Lamprophis swazicus SCHAEFER 1970 Lamprophis swazicus — BOYCOTT 1992 Lamprophis swazicus — BRANCH 1993 Lamprophis swazicus — SCHMIDT & SCOTT 2003 Inyoka swazicus — KELLY et al. 2011 Inyoka swazicus — WALLACH et al. 2014: 350 Inyoka swazicus — BATES et al. 2014: 362 |
| Distribution | Swaziland, Republic of South Africa (E Transvaal, Swaziland) Type locality: "Forbes Reef, Swaziland (26˚42' S, 31˚ 05' E)." [= Manzini District, western Swaziland]. Corrected to 26° 8'58.50"S, 31° 6'13.13"E and 26° 8'55.62"S, 31° 6'23.49"E by James Culverwell, pers. comm., 25 May 2015). |
| Reproduction | oviparous |
| Types | Holotype: PEM 1514/81, a 568 mm specimen (J. Culverwell, Oct. 1968?). |
| Diagnosis | Diagnosis (genus): An endemic southern African genus diagnosed by the following combination of characters: body and tail markedly elon- gated; head small, dorso-ventrally flattened, broader than neck and distinct from it; eye large, protruding, with vertically elliptical pu- pil; midbody scale rows 17 (13 anterior to vent), vertebral row not enlarged; dorsal scales smooth with a single apical pit; ventrals 199–208, without lateral keel; subcaudals paired, 75–91; anal en- tire; maxilla with seven anterior teeth in a graded series, followed after a short diastema by 9–10 posterior, subequal, ungrooved teeth; hemipenis shallowly forked, shaft elongate and mainly nude, without basal spines; two widely separated paired rows of small flat spines distally; lobes encircled by 10–11 pinnate rows of small, non-webbed spines; sulcus centrifugal, dividing on distal half of shaft (Schaefer, 1970; Visser, 1978, 1979; Broadley, 1990). |
| Comment | Habitat: rupicolous and occurs in rocky montane grassland Type species: Lamprophis swazicus Schaefer, 1970, is the type species of the genus Inyoka BRANCH & KELLY in KELLY et al. 2011. |
| Etymology | Named after its type locality. ‘Inyoka’ means ‘snake’ in the Nguni language group, of which SiSwati is the main language of Swaziland, closely related to the isiZulu, isiNdebele and isiXhosa languages of adjacent areas. The Nguni languages have a number of noun classes that do not correspond to the gender classes of most Indo-European languages. Since gender is not inherent to such nouns, we treat Inyoka as masculine for the purposes of name formation and therefore retain the epithet swazicus in its current form for the type species of the genus. |
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