a new species of the genus elaphe (squamata: colubridae) from zoige county, sichuan, china

摘要

previous phylogenetic analyses ot dna sequence data reveal a likely new species ot elaphe fitzinger from china,which forms the sister group of all extant elaphe.one of the three original specimens is crushed and the other two are neonates,which precludes a morphological analysis.three adult snakes (2 females,1 male) collected from jiangzha hot spring in zoige county,sichuan,china on 26 july 2010 now facilitate the species' description.mitochondrial dna nucleotide sequences of cytochrome b (cyt b),nadh dehydrogenase subunit 4 (nd4),12s ribosomal rna (12s rrna),and cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (co1) from the adults are identical to sequences from the crashed specimen.interspecific uncorrected p-distances of partial co1 gene of 26 sequences from all 11 species of elaphe,including this new species,are large (8.5-15.2％).this new species is morphologically distinguished from all other species of elaphe by several characters:“m”-shaped marking on the supraoculars and adjacent frontal; four parallel series of red-brown spots on the dorsum extending from the neck to the vent; four longitudinal stripes associated with the spots; each spot is usually compósed of a whole (or incomplete) red-brown scale with puce borders; spots of each stripe are similar in shape,they occur at relatively regular intervals of one or two scales,and they are slightly red-brown in color; and it has three preoculars,whereas all other specie's have one or two.now elaphe contains 11 species and this discovery highlights the need for continued exploration of temperate regions.