Boiga dendrophila (Boie, 1827)

Mulcahy, Daniel G., Lee, Justin L., Miller, Aryeh H., Chand, Mia, Thura, Myint Kyaw & Zug, George R., 2018, Filling the BINs of life: Report of an amphibian and reptile survey of the Tanintharyi (Tenasserim) Region of Myanmar, with DNA barcode data, ZooKeys 757, pp. 85-152 : 85

Boiga dendrophila (Boie, 1827) Mangrove Cat Snake Fig. 5D

Description.

Adult female 1450 mm SVL, 362 mm TailL in life; dorsal scales in 21-21-17 rows, ventrals 225, subcaudals 96 with single precloacal scale; 8 supralabials, 3rd, 4th & 5th touch eye; 44 lateral white bars on trunk from neck to vent, venter become entirely black at ventral 126. Adult male 1450 mm SVL, 350 mm TailL in life; dorsal scales in 21-23-17 rows, ventrals 211, subcaudals 91 with single precloacal scale; 8 supralabials, 3rd, 4th & 5th touch eye; 42 lateral white bars on trunk from neck to vent, venter becomes entirely black at ventral 84.

Natural history notes.

Collected in primary rainforest along a small tributary to Yeybuchaung-ngal downstream from Camp 1.

General Distribution.

Widespread, Tanintharyi to Greater Sunda and Philippine Islands.

Molecular Data.

Our COI sequences are 1% different (and placed in the same BIN) from two specimens in BOLD (currently private), from Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand, south of the Isthmus of Kra. There are currently no other 16S sequences available for B. dendrophila .

Comments.

This species was also an unsuspected find owing to the absence of previous records for Myanmar; the closest Thai records are from southern Thailand south of the Isthmus of Kra (see Lee et al. 2015). The morphology of these specimens matches that of the subspecies B. dendrophila melanota (Boulenger, 1896).

Specimens examined.

Adult female, adult male (USNM 587041-042, respectively).

Red List status.

NE.