A team of scientists in India has discovered a new species of the viper genus Trimeresurus living in the lowlands of western Arunachal Pradesh state and named it the Salazar’s pit viper (Trimeresurus salazar) after Salazar Slytherin, J.K. Rowling’s fictional Hogwarts School’s co-founder.

Members of the genus Trimeresurus are charismatic venomous snakes, with morphologically as well as ecologically diverse species.

They are distributed across east and southeast Asia. At least 48 nominate species are known, of which at least 15 occur in India.

Most species are typically green in color, but some also have yellow, black, orange, red, or gold markings.

Their diet includes a variety of animals, including lizards, amphibians, birds, rodents, and other small mammals.

“Trimeresurus snakes are morphologically cryptic, which makes it difficult to distinguish them in the field,” said Zeeshan Mirza from India’s National Centre for Biological Sciences and colleagues.

“As a result, their real diversity could be underestimated.”

“The new green pit viper demonstrates a unique orange to reddish stripe, present on the head and body in males.”

The Salazar’s pit viper was discovered in 2019 during a herpetological expedition to Arunachal Pradesh.

“Arunachal Pradesh belongs to the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot and shows a high degree of heterogeneity in its landscape with elevation ranging from 100 to 7,000 m and distinct climatic regimes that harbor diverse flora and fauna,” the researchers said.

“Most of the state is part of the undulating terrain of the Himalayas, intersected by numerous rivers, which flow from the Himalayas and form a longitudinal network of parallel flowing rivers, which ultimately meet the River Brahmaputra.”

“Future dedicated surveys conducted across northeastern India will help document biodiversity, which is under threat from numerous development activities that include road widening, agriculture, and hydro-electric projects,” Mirza said.

The discovery is reported in a paper in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

_____

Z.A. Mirza et al. 2020. A new species of green pit vipers of the genus Trimeresurus Lacépède, 1804 (Reptilia, Serpentes, Viperidae) from western Arunachal Pradesh, India. Zoosystematics and Evolution 96 (1): 123-138; doi: 10.3897/zse.96.48431