First Record of the Blue-Banded Sea Krait (Laticauda Laticaudata, Reptilia: Squamata: Elapidae: Laticaudinae) on Jeju Island, South Korea
Asian Herpetological Research 2017, 8(2): 131–136 ORIGINAL ARTICLE DOI: 10.16373/j.cnki.ahr.160066 First Record of the Blue-banded Sea Krait (Laticauda laticaudata, Reptilia: Squamata: Elapidae: Laticaudinae) on Jeju Island, South Korea Jaejin PARK1#, Kyo-Soung KOO1#, Il-Hun KIM1,2, Woo-Jin CHOI1 and Daesik PARK3* 1 Department of Biology, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Kangwon 24341, South Korea 2 National Marine Biodiversity Institute of Korea, Seocheon, Chungnam 33662, South Korea 3 Division of Science Education, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Kangwon 24341, South Korea Abstract We report the first recorded capture of a blue-banded sea snake (Laticauda laticaudata Linnaeus, 1758, Jobeuntti KunBadabam in Korean) in South Korea based on one male specimen collected from Marado-ri, Seogwipo- si, Jeju-do on 20 October 2016. The morphological features of the lateral nostrils, the much wider ventrals than adjacent dorsals, the horizontally undivided rostral, the two prefrontals, and the uniform black bands on the body indicate that the specimen is L. laticaudata. An analysis of the partial mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequence indicated that the specimen fits well into the known L. laticaudata phylogenetic group, which confirms that the sea krait is L. laticaudata. Including this report, five species of sea snakes (L. laticaudata, L. semifasciata, Hydrophis platurus, H. cyanocinctus, and H. melanocephalus) have now been reported in Korean waters. Keywords sea snake, Hydrophiinae, Laticaudinae, blue-banded sea snake, Laticauda laticaudata 1. Introduction approaches, studies to determine the species distributions and biological and ecological characteristics are necessary Marine (Hamann et al., 2007; Rasmussen et al., 2011a; (Hamann et al., 2007; GBRMPA, 2012).
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