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7 November 2017 Two New Species of Toxicocalamus (Squamata: Elapidae) from Papua New Guinea
Fred Kraus
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Abstract

I describe two new species of the fossorial elapid snake genus Toxicocalamus from New Guinea. The first is restricted to the D'Entrecasteaux Islands off the southeastern tip of New Guinea; the second is known from only a single locality along the southern versant of the Central Highlands. The first species is a member of the Toxicocalamus loriae group, whose members are poorly differentiated from each other by scalational features but can be distinguished by differences in size, color pattern, and morphometric variables; it represents one of six clades of T. “loriae” previously identified using genetic data. Remaining populations assigned to T. loriae require further collecting and research to clarify their taxonomic relationships. The second species is more morphologically distinct and is most similar to Toxicocalamus stanleyanus. It is known from a single specimen, but it occurs in a region with few obvious topographic barriers, leaving uncertain the extent to which it may range more broadly across the southern foothills of the Central Highlands.

Copyright 2017 Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles
Fred Kraus "Two New Species of Toxicocalamus (Squamata: Elapidae) from Papua New Guinea," Journal of Herpetology 51(4), 574-581, (7 November 2017). https://doi.org/10.1670/17-035
Accepted: 3 August 2017; Published: 7 November 2017
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