A team of researchers from the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have discovered new species of vine snakes in the region.
- Vine snakes are known to be among the most common snakes in peninsular India, found even in many peri-urban areas and in the Western Ghats.
- Asian vine snakes, distributed throughout the continent, belong to the genus Ahaetulla and the recently described Proahaetulla.
- Researchers found four distinct small-bodied and short-nosed species: the Northern Western Ghats vine snake (Ahaetulla borealis), Farnsworth’s vine snake (Ahaetulla farnsworthi), Malabar vine snake (Ahaetulla malabarica) andWall’s vine snake (Ahaetulla isabellina) in the Western Ghats rainforests alone.
- These species were superficially similar in their morphology, but separated by geographic or ecological barriers.
- The team also delineated the Travancore vine snake (Ahaetulla travancorica), separated by morphology and a geographic barrier from the Gunther’s vine snake (Ahaetulla dispar).
- All the vine snakes were assigned names related to the locality or based on a morphological character, but the named the species Ahaetulla farnsworthi after Dr. Hubert Farnsworth from the cartoon Futurama.
- They recognised morphological distinctions between the brown vine snake in the Western Ghats and the one found in Sri Lanka, and gave the Western Ghats form a new name (Ahaetulla sahyadrensis).
- There are now six species of vine snakes endemic to the Western Ghats.
(Source: The Hindu)
