Socotran Racer
Hemerophis socotrae (Günther, 1881)
Also calledSocotra-pilsnog (dan) · Сокотранский полоз (rus)
First described in: Günther, A. Descriptions of the amphisbaenians and ophidians collected by Prof. J.B. Balfour in the Island of Socotra.
Descriptions from checklists and floras indexed by GBIF
discussion
Remarks. This species, originally described as Zamenis socotrae, was assigned by Schätti & Utiger (2001) to the new monotypic genus Hemerophis on the basis of morphology and mitochondrial gene sequences. According to these authors the species “ branched off from a hypotetical ancestral stock prior to the radiation leading to recent Old World racer genera ” and “ there is reason to believe that H. socotrae is phylogenetically closest to Afrotropical, and possibily Malagasy, colubrids ”. These results have been confirmed by subsequent studies by Nagy et al. (2003, 2004) and Schätti & Monsch (2004). Probably H. socotrae belongs to an ancient lineage of Gondwanan elements now extinct in the continents, and surviving only in remote and isolated islands such as Socotra and Madagascar.
Annotated checklist and distribution of the Socotran Archipelago Herpetofauna (Reptilia)
In the stacks
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Every page naming Hemerophis socotrae in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
From the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and occurrence records (GBIF.org), with Wikipedia and the Source Library. GBIF species 2459095.