Rhinophis porrectus Wall, 1921

Pyron, Robert Alexander, Ganesh, Sumaithangi Rajagopalan, Sayyed, Amit, Sharma, Vivek, Wallach, Van & Somaweera, Ruchira, 2016, A catalogue and systematic overview of the shield-tailed snakes (Serpentes: Uropeltidae), Zoosystema 38 (4), pp. 453-506 : 484

Rhinophis porrectus Wall, 1921

Rhinophis porrectus Wall, 1921b: 35 .

TYPE MATERIAL. — Holotype: BMNH 1920.8 .25.1 (= BMNH 1946.1.16.70).

TYPE LOCALITY. — On the road between Puttalam and Chilaw, near Madurankuliya fide Willey (1903; the original collector), North- Western province, Sri Lanka .

DISTRIBUTION. — This species is known only from the type specimen collected at Madurankuliya in the lowland dry zone of Sri Lanka (near sea level). Some sources ( Smith 1943) record the type locality as Maradankadawala, an area further interior in the lowland dry zone, but this is an error. The original collector ( Willey 1903) reports the specimen as originating from Madurankuliya. More recently, Kumarasinghe et al. (2013) reported a specimen from Eluwankulama Aruwakkalu Forest, c. 35 km North of Puttalam, identified as Rhinophis cf. porrectus .

DESCRIPTION

The size, scalation, and coloration are indistinguishable from Rhinophis punctatus (see below), from which it is distinguishable only by the higher number of ventral scales (281 vs 236-246) and a much thicker body (see Smith 1943). As with R. punctatus (see below), color pattern a blackish-brown dorsum with white margins, a white stripe on either side of the body, and a brown vertebral stripe.

REMARKS

It is unclear whether or not this is a distinct species from Rhinophis punctatus ( Smith 1943; Gans 1966). We continue to treat it as such, given the large difference in ventral-scale count, the largest such count of any known uropeltid species. It is also geographically distinct from R. punctatus , being found in the Northwest dry zone vs the central hills in the wet zone (but see Karunarathna & Amarasinghe 2011). More specimens are needed to examine the distinctiveness of these species. See Wall (1921b).