A New Species of Pareas (Squamata, Pareidae) from Guangxi Province, China

• Published in: Animals (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 13; p. 2233
• Main Authors: Gong, Yanan, Wu, Jiaxiang, Huang, Song, Xu, Yuhao, Yang, Diancheng, Liu, Yongjin, Liang, Shengming, Lee, Pingshin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 07.07.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: Character recognition; Congeners; Cytochrome b; Dehydrogenase; Ethanol; Mitochondrial DNA; Morphology; Museums; NADH dehydrogenase; Pareas baiseensis sp. nov; Phylogenetics; Phylogeny; snail-eating snake; Software; Taxa; Taxonomy; China; snail-eating snake; Pareas baiseensis sp. nov; phylogeny; taxonomy; morphology
• ISSN: 2076-2615; 2076-2615
• DOI: 10.3390/ani13132233

We described a new species of genus from Baise City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, based on morphological and molecular evidence. sp. nov. is distinguished from its congeners by the combination of (1) Yellowish-brown body colouration; (2) Frontal subhexagonal to diamond-shaped with its lateral sides converging posteriorly; (3) The anterior pair of chin shields is longer than it is broad; (4) Loreal not in contact with the eye, prefrontal in contact with the eye, two or three suboculars; (5) Rows of 15-15-15 dorsal scales, five rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled at the middle of the body, one vertebral scale row enlarged; (6) 187-191 ventrals, 89-97 subcaudals, all divided, cloacal plate single; (7) Two postocular stripes, the nuchal area forming a dark black four-pointed fork collar with the middle tines shorter than the outside tines. The genetic divergence (uncorrected -distance) between the new species and other representatives of ranged from 13.9% to 24.4% for (Cyt b) and 12.1% to 25.5% for (ND4). Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial DNA gene data recovered the new species from being the sister taxon to ( ) from China.