Lachesis acrochorda (GARCIA, 1896)
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Lachesis acrochorda
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| Higher Taxa | Viperidae, Crotalinae, Colubroidea, Caenophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes) |
| Subspecies | |
| Common Names | S: Verrugosa, Guascama |
| Synonym | Bothrops achrocordus GARCIA 1896: 23 Lachesis acrochorda — CAMPBELL & LAMAR 2004 Lachesis acrochorda — HOHMEISTER 2004 Lachesis achrocorda — PYRON & BURBRINK 2013 Lachesis acrochorda — WALLACH et al. 2014: 355 |
| Distribution | Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, elevation 0-1000 m Type locality: "las selvas deI Chocó, á orillas de los rios Atrato, San Juan, Dagua y Telembí y ... el camino de Buenaventura" [= Chocó forests, Atrato, San Juan, Dagua and Telembí riverbanks, and the Buenaventura highway, Chocó, Valle deI Cauca, Cauca and Nariño Dept., W Colombia]. |
| Reproduction | oviparous |
| Types | Holotype: nondesignated, location unknown (WALLACH et al. 2014: 347) |
| Diagnosis | Description: Head tan brown with black postocular stripes (1–2 scales wide); supralabials usually yellowish tan and spotless; head dorsally marked with irregular spots or “ara-besques”; throat white; body ground color is dark brown to beige usually with 23–31 irregular or incomplete black dorsal rhombuses separated by ivory to dirty white scales, seen later-ally as inverted triangles, and the interior of each rhombus (or triangle) basically the same as the ground color or darker; iris red-brown, becoming darker with age. Ground color in hatchlings and juveniles tan brown to orange-brown, rhombuses or triangles dark brown and usually incomplete, tail pinkish. Head scales are small, barely smooth to tuberculate; dorsals keeled and in 31–39 rows; vertebral and paraverte-bral scale rows very tuberculate, appearing as a vertebral keel; ventral scales in males 204–228, in females 202–221; subcau-dals 46–58 in males, 49–55 in females (Valencia et al. 2016). Valencia et al. (2016) reported maximum total lengths of 2,327 mm for males and 2,342 mm for females in Ecuador. The maximum total length reported for the species is 300 cm (Campbell and Lamar 2004).Lachesis acrochorda and L. stenophrys are externally similar but usually can be distinguished by the latter having 191–209 ventrals (202–228 in L. acrochorda) and usually few if any dark spots on the top of the head (distinctly marked with dark spots and lines or “Ripa’s arabesques” in L. acrochorda; Ripa 1999; Campbell and Lamar 2004). Lachesis acrochordais most similar to L. muta, although Campbell and Lamar (2004) indicated that they differ in body shape (L. muta round in cross-section, L. acrochorda tall and compressed); however, we cannot corroborate this distinction, as our expe-riences indicated that the body shapes of all congeners can vary in response to different factors (from Barrio-Amorós et zl. 2020). |
| Comment | Venomous! L. achrocorda was previously considered as a synonym of L. stenophrys. |
| Etymology | The specific name acrochorda comes from the Greek acrochordon (= wart), a reference to the warty dorsal scalation of the species. |
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