Five new species of vine snake discovered in the Sahyadris

Two of these species are from the Sahyadris and three are from the southern part of Western Ghats

A team of researchers and herpetologists exploring the Sahyadris and Western ghats in Maharashtra have discovered five new species of vine snake, and the research paper regarding this was recently published in a leading international scientific journal.

The discovery of the five new species has been successful due to a long drawn research in the area for close to a decade in the ecologically rich Sahyadri mountain ranges. Asian vine snakes, distributed throughout Asia, belong to the genus Ahaetulla and the recently described Proahaetulla. Once the team started its research, they were surprised to discover that the common green vine snake (Ahaetulla nasuta) was a complex species comprising several cryptic species.

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According to researcher Saunak Pal, "Earlier, there was a belief that this snake which is found in the Western ghats belongs to Ahaetulla Nasuta species, but after researching in detail, we found that there are five different species in the western ghats. Two of these species have emerged from the Sahyadri and three from the southern part of the Western Ghats."

The findings were recently published in the international scientific journal Zootaxa and the team that was a part of this important research includes Ashok Mallik, Achuthan Srikanthan, Prinshia D'Souza, Kartik Shankar of Madras Snake Park, Samuthangi Rajagopalan and Sonak Pal of BNHS.

According to Pal , one of the species has been named Ahaetulla Sahyadrensis and the other Ahaetulla Borealis. The species Borealis is found from Matheran, Lonavala to north Karnataka.

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The species Sahyadrensis is found in the entire Western Ghats. The snake species found in the Tamil Nadu border, Agastamlai has been named Ahaetulla Travancore, Ahaetulla Farnaswarthi is the name of the snake found in Karnataka and Ahaetulla Malabarika is of the snake found in North Kerala. All these five species are endemic to the Western Ghats.

Team members speak

Ashok Mallik, the lead author stated, "Widely distributed species may comprise many cryptic species, which can only be detected by genetic analysis. Our earlier discovery of another deeply divergent vine snake Proahaetulla antiqua, suggests that the entire lineage of vine snakes (Ahaetulla) evolved around 26 million years ago during the mid-Oligocene from its sister Proahaetulla."

Kartik Shankar, a senior author added, "The discovery helps us document species diversity and also sheds light on the evolutionary history of vine snakes in South Asia.'

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