Calamaria lumbricoidea Boie, 1827

Leong, T. M. & Lim, Kelvin K. P., 2003, Herpetofaunal Records From Fraser’S Hill, Peninsular Malaysia, With Larval Descriptions Of Limnonectes Nitidus And Theloderma Asperum (Amphibia: Ranidae And Rhacophoridae), Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 51 (1), pp. 123-136 : 132

Calamaria lumbricoidea Boie

Calamaria vermiformis (non- Duméril, Bibron & Duméril) – Tweedie, 1950: 192; Tweedie, 1954: 110.

Calamaria lumbricoidea – Inger & Marx, 1965: 85.

Material examined. – None.

Observation. – Two photographs of a dried roadkill (showing diagnostic dorsal and ventral aspect) in June 1994 by Subaraj Rajathurai.

Remarks. – According to Tweedie (1950: 192), there appears to be two distinct colour forms of Calamaria lumbricoidea in the Malay Peninsula. One form has its entire dorsal surface dark brown, each scale bordered above and below with white, such that narrow white lines run along the body between the scale rows. The belly is sharply and regularly barred black and yellow (white in preserved examples). The other form differs in having a brown dorsum without narrow white lines, and an irregularly barred underside with many of the ventral scales being half black and half yellow. The snake from Fraser’s Hill in the photographs examined by us exhibits the colour pattern of the first form. Tweedie (1950: 192) had the impression that the white-striped variety was confined to highlands above 1,200m, the other from the foothills and lowland. Later, Inger & Marx (1965: 82) reported a geographical rather than an altitudinal demarcation in their distribution. They postulated that the non-striped form was from the western coast of the peninsula while the striped form was found further inland. However, this ‘pattern’ of distribution was demonstrated inconsistent when a specimen of the non-striped form was found at Gunung Benom, an inland locality (see Tweedie, 1983: 56).