A new snake: Trimeresurus salazar

These are the days for Harry Potter fans among taxonomists and naturalists. Another animal has been described using the name of a character in JK Rowling's famous books: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’s co-founder, Salazar Slytherin.

Green pit vipers of the genus Trimeresurus are venomous serpents, with rather diverse looking species and varying life styles. They can be found  across east and Southeast Asia. This new species was found in Arunachal Pradesh, a state in India that borders Buthan and Myanmar.

For the experts: A new species of green pit vipers of the genus Trimeresurus Lacépède, 1804 is described from the lowlands of western Arunachal Pradesh state of India. The new species, Trimeresurus salazar, is a member of the subgenus Trimeresurus, a relationship deduced contingent on two mitochondrial genes, 16S and ND4, and recovered as sister to Trimeresurus septentrionalis Kramer, 1977. The new species differs from the latter in bearing an orange to reddish stripe running from the lower border of the eye to the posterior part of the head in males, higher number of pterygoid and dentary teeth, and a short, bilobed hemipenis. Description of the new species and T. arunachalensis Captain, Deepak, Pandit, Bhatt & Athreya, 2019 from northeastern India in a span of less than one year highlights the need for dedicated surveys to document biodiversity across northeastern India.