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Download Download The Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT) is dedicated to building evidence for conservaton globally by publishing peer-reviewed artcles OPEN ACCESS online every month at a reasonably rapid rate at www.threatenedtaxa.org. All artcles published in JoTT are registered under Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License unless otherwise mentoned. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproducton, and distributon of artcles in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publicaton. Journal of Threatened Taxa Building evidence for conservaton globally www.threatenedtaxa.org ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) Communication A new species of shieldtail snake (Squamata: Uropeltidae: Uropeltis) from the Bengaluru uplands, India S.R. Ganesh, K.G. Punith, Omkar D. Adhikari & N.S. Achyuthan 26 May 2021 | Vol. 13 | No. 6 | Pages: 18508–18517 DOI: 10.11609/jot.6736.13.6.18508-18517 For Focus, Scope, Aims, and Policies, visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/aims_scope For Artcle Submission Guidelines, visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/submissions For Policies against Scientfc Misconduct, visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/policies_various For reprints, contact <[email protected]> The opinions expressed by the authors do not refect the views of the Journal of Threatened Taxa, Wildlife Informaton Liaison Development Society, Zoo Outreach Organizaton, or any of the partners. The journal, the publisher, the host, and the part- Publisher & Host ners are not responsible for the accuracy of the politcal boundaries shown in the maps by the authors. Member Threatened Taxa Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 May 2021 | 13(6): 18508–18517 ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) OPEN ACCESS htps://doi.org/10.11609/jot.6736.13.6.18508-18517 #6736 | Received 22 September 2020 | Final received 29 April 2021 | Finally accepted 03 May 2021 COMMUNICATION A new species of shieldtail snake (Squamata: Uropeltdae: Uropelts) from the Bengaluru uplands, India S.R. Ganesh 1 , K.G. Punith 2 , Omkar D. Adhikari 3 & N.S. Achyuthan 4 1 Chennai Snake Park, Rajbhavan Post, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600022, India. 2 WeRoar (Wild Animal Emancipaton Reptle Oriented Awareness & Rescue), Tumkur, Karnataka 572102, India. 3 Natural history collectons, Bombay Natural History Society, Hornbill House, S.B.S. Road, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400023, India. 4 Center for Ecological Sciences, Indian Insttute of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560012, India. 1 [email protected] (corresponding author), 2 [email protected], 3 [email protected], 4 [email protected] Abstract: A new species of shieldtail snake, Uropelts jerdoni, is here described based on eight specimens from Devarayana Durga and Nandi Durga that are under-researched hills near Bengaluru in southern India. The new species is a member of the Uropelts ceylanica group that can be distnguished from related taxa as follows: a truncate and fatened caudal shield with a circumscribed concave disc; part of rostral visible from above subequal to its distance from frontal; rostral partally separatng nasal scales; 17: 17: 17 dorsal scale rows; 140–148 ventral scales; 7–9 pairs of subcaudals; dark blackish-grey above, powdered with minute yellow specks, yellow lateral stripes on neck and tail; ventrolateral region with yellow motling; venter black. This new species is currently known only from two ranges Devarayana Durga and Nandi Durga but judging by the presence of similar, adjacent massifs, is hypothesized to be present in nearby hillocks surrounding Bengaluru City. Keywords: Allopatry, colouraton, Devarayana Durga, Nandi Durga, peninsular India, scalaton, Uropelts jerdoni sp. nov. ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:5165B01C-B278-45D3-AACD-C540D260D02F Editor: Anonymity requested. Date of publicaton: 26 May 2021 (online & print) Citaton: Ganesh, S.R., K.G. Punith, O.D. Adhikari & N.S. Achyuthan (2021). A new species of shieldtail snake (Squamata: Uropeltdae: Uropelts) from the Bengaluru uplands, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 13(6): 18508–18517. htps://doi.org/10.11609/jot.6736.13.6.18508-18517 Copyright: © Ganesh et al. 2021. Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproducton, and distributon of this artcle in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publicaton. Funding: None. Competng interests: The authors declare no competng interests. Author details: Dr. S.R. Ganesh is the Deputy Director and Scientst at the Chennai Snake Park, conductng research on reptles and amphibians of southern India. His research themes include documentng the diversity of under-explored ecoregions, updatng and refning species characterizatons, and elucidatng modern-day distributon paterns with respect to southern India’s herpetofauna. K.G. Punith is a wildlife conservatonist, who runs the non-governmental organizaton WEROAR (Wild Animal Emancipaton Reptle Oriented Awareness and Rescue). The organizaton is creatng awareness about nature conservaton among Tumkuru (Karnataka, India) public and is also working towards the mitgaton of human-wild animal conficts in the same area. Omkar D. Adhikari is a Junior research fellow in Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) Museum, working on digitzaton and maintenance of the natural history collectons. His special interest lies in the taxonomy, life history evoluton, diversity, ecology, and biogeography of the reptles in India and Southeast Asia. Achyuthan N. Srikanthan is a researcher with the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Insttute of Science, Bangalore studying the systematcs, biogeography, ecology of herpetofauna, as well as ecomorphology, evolutonary osteology and specialized integument microstructure characterizaton of reptles. Has now initated his Ph.D. at the Clark University, USA. Author contributons: SRG led the diagnosis of the new species against the comparatve materials that he had examined and wrote the manuscript with inputs from NSA and ODA. KGP led the feld work and gathered data from the live uncollected specimen and photo-documented the subjects. ODA examined and scored morphological details of historical paratypes and cross-checked data from the recent type specimens, while registering them with the museum. NSA conducted the feld surveys and roadkill specimen collectons, examined the type specimens and scored morphological details. All authors equally contributed in fne tuning and refning the draf and approved the fnal version. Acknowledgements: We are grateful to our respectve organisatons for encouraging our research actvites – the executve chairman and board of trustees of the Chennai Snake Park Trust (CSPT), the KS Lab, Drs. Kartk Shanker, S.P. Vijayakumar and all the lab members at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES, IISc) and the director and curator of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). SRG thanks Raghunath R Belur & Sugandhi Gadadhar for kindly sharing photos of Nandi Durga and S.D. Gnanaolivu for help with artcles on the fora of Nandi Durga. Thanks are due to Smrit Iyer, for helping with the camera and to Drs. Sujay and Nikita for putng us in touch, thereby being instrumental for our collaboraton on this and our other joint works. 18508 Uropelts jerdoni sp. nov. Ganesh et al. J TT INTRODUCTION MATERIALS & METHODS Snakes of the family Uropeltdae Müller, 1832 are The current work is based on our examinaton of an under-researched group of small and unassuming 39 preserved specimens (representng 16 congeners) fossorial snakes from the Indian subcontnent (Beddome and the type specimens as well as live uncollected 1886; Smith 1943; Rajendran 1985; Whitaker & Captain specimens of the new species that is described herein. 2004; Wallach et al. 2014). The genus Uropelts Cuvier, During our expeditons in the uplands of Bengaluru, we 1829 currently consists of 25 species occurring in the came across three specimens (two dead, one alive) that hills of peninsular India (Pyron et al. 2016; Jins et al. we could assign to the genus Uropelts sensu Pyron et al. 2018; Ganesh & Achyuthan 2020). The frst species in (2016) in lacking mental grove, supraocular, postocular this genus that was described was Uropelts ceylanica or temporal scales and having a dorso-ventrally Cuvier, 1829, a species that is currently considered to be depressed tail with a scaly caudal disc. The road kill a complex (Gower et al. 2008; Ganesh et al. 2014) and specimens were notced having apparent breakage of with an erroneous type locality ‘Ceylon’ that is outside certain scales in the ventral aspect and indentatons the known distributon of the species (see Pyron et al. in parts of their trunk suggestng a run over by a small 2016). Of late, two species U. bicatenata (Günther, vehicle. During our perusal of uropeltd collectons in 1864) and U. shorti (Beddome, 1863) previously the Bombay Natural History Society Museum, we came considered invalid were resurrected and one species across six historical specimens that fully match with the U. madurensis (Beddome, 1878) that was previously new species. We photographed the subjects using high considered a subspecies, was elevated to a full species resoluton digital cameras. We scored morphological rank (see Gower et al. 2008; Ganesh et al. 2014). In details like scalaton, measurements and colour paterns recent tmes, two new species Uropelts bhupathyi Jins, with the help of magnifying hand lenses (5 X optcal Sampaio, Gower, 2018 and Uropelts rajendrani Ganesh zoom). We measured
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