Coluber versicolor

Vanzolini, Paulo E. & Myers, Charles W., 2015, The Herpetological Collection Of Maximilian, Prince Of Wied (1782 - 1867), With Special Reference To Brazilian Materials, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2015 (395), pp. 1-155 : 58-59

C. versicolor is also a synonym of Xenodon severus .

The type locality, as stated in the Reise, is the creek Estreito D’agua, at 14 ° 559S, 39 ° 239W ( Vanzolini, 1992: 70). There are no specimens in the collection.

Coluber doliatus, Merrem

Plate 32

1824 Isis : 668 (diagnosis as C. doliatus ).

1824 Abbildungen: Lief. 8 ( fig. 3 of composite pl.). 1825 Beitra¨ge: 368.

PRESENT STATUS: Liophis poecilogyrus (Wied, 1824) .

REMARKS: This species was diagnosed in the Isis for 1824, figured in the same year in the Abbildungen, and subsequently described in the Beitra¨ge. It has long been known that it is the young of Liophis 2. In fact, Wied himself so comments in the Beitra¨ge (p. 376); he decided for the individuality of the species based on body proportions, which, however, are well known to vary ontogenetically.

Wied gave measurements and scale counts of a single specimen from Barra do Jucu (20 ° 249S, 40 ° 199W), and a colored plate with outlines of the head in dorsal and ventral view. No specimen in the collection matches agnosed in the 1824 Isis and illustrated in the same year in the Abbildungen. Smith et al. (1994) assigned it to ‘‘Heft’’ 31 8 of the Abbildungen, but unfortunately used an arbitrary plate number (‘‘[44]’’) without awareness that the plates were not originally numbered and that there are two plates of the species in Lieferung 8. Consequently, the ‘‘original reference’’ in opinion 1832 of the International Commision on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN, 1994: 73) is shown as:

poecilogyrus , Coluber, Wied-Neuwied , [ Wied, 1822 –1831, Lief. 8], Abbildungen zur Naturgeschichte Brasiliens, Heft 8, pl. 44, fig. 2

The reference to figure 2 identifies plate ‘‘44’’ as the one that is arbitrarily numbered plate 32 in the present work.

There are in the Beitra¨ge data on five specimens, to be compared with two in the collection:

them. AMNH R-3594 is beyond doubt the subadult depicted in the same plate as Coluber doliatus ; especially telling are peculiarities in the arrangement of the rings and in the throat scutellation.

Coluber doliatus Linnaeus is itself a suppressed name (ICZN, 1967).

Figures

Fig. 3. Title page from the third volume of Prince Maximilian’s Abbildungen zur Naturgeschichte Brasiliens (Wied, 1822–1831). Illustrated taxa are listed on the volume (Liefererung) title pages, but the contained plates are unnumbered (there are 6 plates in each of 12 Liefererungen). The herpetological plates reproduced herein are arbitrarily numbered 1–56 following the organization of the present work, which reflects the order of species presentation in volume 1 of the Beitra¨ge (fig. 4). Geographic modifiers (Neuwied and Runkel) were dropped from the Wied family name in 1824. After that, ‘‘Wied-Neuwied’’ appeared only on the title pages of the Abbildungen, which had begun publication two years earlier.

Fig. 2. Pen-and-watercolor sketches dated 1815 and attributed to Prince Maximilian. Top: Gesamtansicht der Expedition (‘‘General View of the expedition’’), showing pack mules, handlers, and military guard. Bottom: Prinz Maximilian mit Teilnehmern seiner Expedition (‘‘Prince Max with members of his expedition’’). From Bosch, 1991: 84–85. (Courtesy of Brazilian Library of Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart)