Hydrophis gracilis (Shaw, 1802)

Figueroa, Alex, Low, Martyn E. Y. & Lim, Kelvin K. P., 2023, Singapore’s herpetofauna: updated and annotated checklist, history, conservation, and distribution, Zootaxa 5287 (1), pp. 1-378 : 275

Hydrophis gracilis (Shaw, 1802) — Erroneous.

Graceful Small-headed Sea Snake

Singapore records.

Hydrus gracilis — Cantor 1847c: 1057.

Hydrophis gracilis —Hanitsch, 1897: 20.— Hanitsch, 1898: 10.— Flower, 1899: 687.— Boulenger, 1912: 191.— Hanitsch, 1912b: 17.— de Rooij, 1917: 228.—Sworder, 1923: 70.— Iskandar & Colijn, 2001: 134.— Das, 2010: 320.— Das, 2012a: 95.—Chan-ard et al., 2015: 271.— Das, 2018: 113.

Microcephalophis gracilis —K.K.P. Lim & L.M. Chou, 1990: 55.—K.K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 1992: 92, 149.—L.M. Chou et al., 1994: 106.—K.P. Lim & F.L.K. Lim, 2002: 149.—Wallach et al., 2014: 439.— Leviton et al., 2018: 468.

“ Microcephalophis ” —P.K.L. Ng et al., 2011: 302.

Remarks. Cantor (1847c) mentioned that H. gracilis is rare in Singapore based on catches in fishing nets, and Hanitsch (1897) included H. gracilis in his checklist of specimens deposited at the the Raffles Museum, but Smith (1920) clarified that the specimen is H. fasciatus . Since there are inconsistencies regarding the localities of Cantor’s specimens and no additional specimens were taken from Singapore, we refrain from including H. gracilis into Singapore’s herpetofauna checklist. However, LKCNHM has two specimens from the South China Sea.

LKCNHM & NHMUK Museum specimens. No specimens.

Additional Singapore museum specimens. No specimens.