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Waray’s dwarf burrowing snake. Photo from Jeff Weinell’s Twitter post.
MANILA, Philippines – A new species of snake believed to be endemic to the Philippines has been found to be part of a new genus, meaning it has distinctive characteristics that differentiate it from other existing snake species in the world.
An article by University of Kansas graduate research assistant Jeffrey Weinell and colleagues Daniel Paluh, Cameon Siler, and Rafe Brown stated that the Waray dwarf burrowing snake, which is known to be native to the Samar and Leyte Islands, of hence its name, it has some characteristics that are very important. different from its previous classification.
According to the study, Waray’s dwarf burrowing snake, now classified as part of the new genus Levitonius, as a species of Levitonius mirus, shares multiple skeletal features with close relatives Myersophis and Oxyrhabdium.
However, it differs in terms of size, as the maximum total length was measured at 172 millimeters, making it the smallest known species in the Elapoidea family.
Due to its size, which is less than seven inches, it feeds primarily on earthworms.
“The molecular data support Levitonius, a new genus, as it is more closely related to Myersophis and Oxyrhabdium, and it shares multiple skeletal characteristics with these genera; Levitonius, a new genus, differs from all these taxa in body size, scale and other characters ”, says the article, published on December 23.
“The skeletal and phenotypic data suggest that Levitonius, the new genus, is fossorial and probably has a specialized diet in earthworms. Levitonius mirus, a new genus and species, has a maximum total length of 172 mm and is currently the smallest known species in Elapoidea ”, he added.
Weinell announced the availability of his peer-reviewed article in a tweet, sharing the link to the open access study.
Take a look at this new GENDER and species of snake from the Philippines! Levitonius mirus. It was great to work with @danpaluh and others to finally get this published. #Philippines #snakes #new species #herpetology https://t.co/rvqSQWawD0 https://t.co/98Sh5U1ZFR
– Jeff Weinell (@jeffweinell) December 23, 2020
In the journal, Weinell and his collaborators provided various models and results, from CT scans to X-rays of skeletal compositions, observations, DNA samples and analysis that support the need to assign a new genus for Waray’s dwarf auger.
What these findings bring, the researchers said, is the need to further study the biodiversity of Samar and Leyte to properly assess how the country’s fauna developed.
“Our results highlight the need for future work on the Samar and Leyte Islands, which have received relatively little attention from systematists, in part due to a prevailing biogeographic paradigm that predicted (not necessarily correctly) that these islands would simply have a subset of nested fauna of terrestrial vertebrates in the Mindanao fauna region, ”the study said.
“The discovery of a strikingly distinct and phylogenetically divergent snake lineage in these land masses joins numerous related studies calling for a total rethinking of the biogeographic framework of the Pleistocene Aggregate Island Complex model (the PAIC diversification paradigm),” added.
/ MUF
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