A New Species of Krait (Squamata: Elapidae) from the Red River System of Northern Vietnam

We describe a new species of krait (Elapidae: Bungarus) from the Red River drainage in northern Vietnam. The new species differs from all congeners except its sister species Bungarus bungaroides by the combination of divided subcaudals, dorsal scales arranged in 15 rows, black and white rings on body and tail, and in color pattern of the head as well as hemipenis morphology. The new species differs from B. bungaroides, a distantly allopatric species ranging from eastern Nepal to northern Myanmar, in molecular characters and color pattern. We propose a vicariance hypothesis in which speciation coincided with the uplift of intervening mountain ranges in southwestern Yunnan (China) and/or Late Tertiary glaciations.

Figure 1.

Map of southeastern Asia including topographic features (all caps), major rivers (title case), and all known localities for Bungarus bungaroides (1–9) and Bungarus slowinskii (10–11): (1) Dinghari, Ilam, Nepal [not examined] and Godak, Ilam, Nepal [not examined]; (2) Darjiling, West Bengal, India, and Labdah, West Bengal, India; (3) Sikkim, India [voucher non-existent]; (4) Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, India (type locality of B. bungaroides); (5) N. Cachar, India [voucher non-existent]; (6) Sitikhima, Nagaland, India [not examined]; (7) Medog, Tibet; (8) Matsatap, Kachin, Myanmar; (9) Ahke, Kachin, Myanmar; (10) Nam Tha, Lao Cai, Vietnam; (11) Nau Hau, Yen Bai, Vietnam (type locality of B. slowinskii).Scale bar = 200 km

Figure 2.

Phylogenetic relationships among mitochondrial lineages of Bungarus bungaroides and Bungarus slowinskii inferred by Bayesian analysis of cytochrome b and ND4 sequences.Scale bar represents 0.1 substitutions per site. Numbers along internodes are posterior probability values calculated from 50,000 Bayesian trees (upper rows), and bootstrap values from maximum-parsimony analyses (lower rows, absent where <50%). Support values before and after slashes relate to analyses of the combined data (293 bp) and separate analyses of the cytochrome b data (127 bp), respectively

Figure 3.

Holotype of Bungarus slowinskii (IEBR 1172).Head in dorsal (top), lateral (center), and ventral (bottom) views. Dotted lines represent extent of white in color pattern. Scale bar = 1 cm

Figure 4.

Holotype of Bungarus slowinskii (IEBR 1172). Dorsal (A) and ventral (B) color pattern

Figure 5.

Holotype of Bungarus slowinskii (IEBR 1172).Lateral view of body showing ventrolaterally extending light rings and color pattern variation along body

Contributor Notes

(UK, DM) Laboratory of Forensic Genetics, Zentrum der Rechtsmedizin, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Kennedyallee 104, 60596 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; (UK) Sektion Herpetologie, Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Senckenberg, Senckenberganlage 25, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; (DK, MAD) Department of Biological Sciences, University Park Campus, Florida International University, Miami, Florida 33199; (DK)Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1606; (RL) Osher Foundation Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Department of Herpetology, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California 94103; and (NQT) Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, 18 Hoang Quoc Viet, Hanoi, Vietnam. (UK) u.kuch@em.uni-frankfurt.de. Send reprint requests to UK.

Accepted: 03 May 2005