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Home , Oxyrhopus, Oxyrhopus guibei, Oxyrhopus petolarius

Herpetology Notes, volume 8: 153-154 (2015) (published online on 10 April 2015)

Death of a juvenile false coral , guibei (Hoge & Romano, 1977) (Serpentes: Dipsadidae), after ingesting a tropical house gecko, Hemidactylus mabouia (Moreau de Jonnès, 1818) (Sauria: Gekkonidae)

Rodrigo Samuel Bueno Gavira1,*, Ailton Fabrício-Neto2 and Denis Vieira Andrade1

Some have the ability to feed on comparatively At 1430 h on 04 July 2013, we collected a live large prey (Gavira and Andrade, 2013), which, in some juvenile false , O. guibei (body mass after cases, may exceed their own body masses (Greene, prey removal: 5.25 g, total length 28.7 cm), on the grass 1983, 1992; Secor and Diamond, 1997). Following prey next to a food warehouse, in the municipality of Rio ingestion, snakes must complete digestion before the Claro, São Paulo State, southeast (22.23314°S, prey begins to putrefy inside their gut due to bacterial 47.34286°W; 620 m a.s.l.). The snake had a bloated action (Pough et al., 2003). mid-body (Figure 1A) and attempted to regurgitate Hoge and Romano, 1977 is a several times, but ended up deceasing about three hours terrestrial South American false coral snake, occurring after capture. in , Brazil, , and (Hoge and Upon dissection, we found that the snake had ingested, Romano, 1977; Zaher and Caramaschi, 1992). This headfirst, a tropical house gecko, Hemidactylus has crepuscular-nocturnal activity, inhabiting mabouya (Figure 1B). The prey, even though partially edges, open , and urban areas (Sazima digested (note the absence of the gecko’s head and and Abe, 1991). Oxyrhopus guibei feeds mainly on anterior limbs in Figure 1B), still represented ca. 72% of and small (Andrade and Silvano, 1996; the snake’s body mass and 45% of its total length. Both França et al., 2008; Alencar et al., 2009; Barbo et al., voucher specimens were deposited in the Herpetological 2011), and is also known for preying on considerably Collection of the Instituto Butantan, São Paulo, SP large prey, sometimes even exceeding its ingestion (IBSP 86169). capacity (Sazima and Martins, 1990). Herein, we report Snake deaths presumably related to the inability to an episode of feeding-related mortality of a juvenile O. digest oversized prey have been previously reported guibei following the consumption of an adult tropical (e.g. Leavitt, 2010; Cavalcanti et al., 2012; Arsovski house gecko, Hemidactylus mabouia Moreau de Jonnès, et al., 2014), including in a congeneric species, O. 1818. petolarius Linnaeus, 1758 (Nogueira et al., 2013). Hence, some snakes’ misevaluation of their ability to capture, ingest (see Sazima and Martins, 1990), and digest comparatively oversized prey, mainly by naive individuals, may prove highly maladaptive.

Acknowledgement. We are grateful to Jonathan Forte de Castro for 1 Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Departamento de field and handling assistance and to Valdir José Germano, for collection Zoologia, Instituto de Biociências. Avenida 24-A, 1.515, management. Financial support was provided by the Fundação de CEP 13506-900, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil. Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP; to RSBG and 2 Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Departamento de to DVA) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências. Avenida 24-A, 1.515, Tecnológico (CNPq; to AFN and to DVA). Collecting permit was CEP 13506-900, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil. issued by Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Renewable * Corresponding author: [email protected] Resources (IBAMA; process number 22028-1). 154 Rodrigo Samuel Bueno Gavira et al.

Figure 1. A) The bloated body of a freshly dead juvenile Oxyrhopus guibei after ingesting a house gecko; B) Juvenile O. guibei with its stomach contents, a partially digested Hemidactylus mabouia.

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