Gloydius species from Northern China

Hi Guys,

We just received a few of these from our collector without a definite location. He said they are from Northern China, which to him would be anywhere north of Anhui Province. They look like Gloydius brevicaudatus or G. blomhoffi, but the dorsal pattern is striped. He managed to get 3, but one died enroute.

Any ideas on the species? Maybe striped form of the above or a distinct species? Any help would be appreciated!


Samuel Li

Hi Samuel,

I couldn't accurately identify the species of the snake in the picture because I used to have experience in keeping B. brevicaudis and B. saxicollis in 1989, but I couldn't recall anymore which of the two species have light-colored dorsal stripes (symptoms of Alzheimer's disease???). I did'nt have luck with both of them because of the hot and humid climate here in the Philippines. I wish I could help on this one.

matt

Hello Samuel,
I used to breed these snakes. They were Gloydius brevicaudus (at that time G. blomhoffi brevicaudus) and among the babies of one bloodline I always had normally patterned ones and striped ones like your´s.

Rainer

Just wait for it to shed and start counting scales.

Cheers, Ronny

Ronny Levin wrote:

Just wait for it to shed and start counting scales.

Cheers, Ronny

..I just tried a little scale-counting on the pic using the key in Gloyd & Conant "Snakes of the Agkistrodon-Complex" 1990.
It seems that the little one on the pic bears 21 scale-rows around midbody, but the pic doesn't allow me to spot the presence of Apical Pits.
Let's take a look at the provided key to the "Asian Species And Subspecies of Agkistrodo (sensu stricto)":
1 A Dorsal scale rows at midbody usually 19 or 21 2
B Dorsal scale rows at midbody usually 23 10
2 A Dorsal scale rows at midbody 19; ....; apical pits absent A. monticola
B Dorsal scale rows at midbody 21; apical pits present 3
3 A Posterior supralabials fused with the adjacent temporals A. himalayanus
(Southern face of the Himalayas from northern Pakistan through northern India to Nepal)
B Posterior supralabials not fused with temporals 4
4 A Body pattern esentially of four irregular dark longitudinal stripes, often forming a zigzag design (sometimes melanistic)
A. strauchi
(The Tibetan plateau, eastern Tsinghai and western Szechwan provinces, China)
B Body pattern of dark crossband or large blotches 5
5 A Body pattern of dark subrectangular crossbands; tongue pink in life; tail relatively long, dark at tip
A. caliginosus
(Korea from the Masan-Pusan area ....)
The rest of the key is based on body pattern, useless for these unusual colored specimens. The location will do best with reading all the species accounts.... and verifying with other sources since the book I use is 18 years old and taxonomy might change lot (reptile-database gives for Gloydius as these snakes are called now the following species:
* Gloydius blomhoffi BOIE 1826
* Gloydius brevicaudus STEJNEGER 1907
* Gloydius halys PALLAS 1776
* Gloydius himalayanus GÜNTHER 1864
* Gloydius intermedius STRAUCH 1868
* Gloydius monticola WERNER 1922
* Gloydius saxatilis EMELIANOV 1937
* Gloydius shedaoensis ZHAO 1979
* Gloydius strauchi BEDRIAGA 1912
* Gloydius tsushimaensis ISOGAWA, MORIYA & MITSUI 1994
* Gloydius ussuriensis EMELIANOV 1929 )

Sorry for really helping... :-)

Greetings from Hamburg

Sven Vogler

Try these pages allso.

http://www.freeweb.hu/agkistrodon/taxonomy.html

....there is another really great site for scalecounting, i'll try and remember it and get back with that.

Cheers, Ronny