Hydrophis crassicollis Anderson, 1871

Mondal, Sonia, Ganesh, S. R., Sethy, P. G. S., Raghunathan, C., Raha, Sujoy & Sarkar, Sagnik, 2022, Redescriptions of the type specimens of synonymous nominal taxa of sea snakes (Serpentes: Elapidae: Hydrophis, Laticauda) at the Zoological Survey of India, Zootaxa 5169 (4), pp. 301-321 : 306

Hydrophis crassicollis Anderson, 1871

synonym of Hydrophis cyanocinctus Daudin, 1803

( Table 1 ; Fig. 2 )

Material Examined. ZSI 8272 Holotype from Hughli, below Calcutta.

Description. Head robust, head shields large, regular; Rostral broader than high; Nasal superior in position, nasal shields in contact with each other; Prefrontal short, squarish, 2 nd supralabial touching prefrontal; Frontal as long as the distance from the tip of the rostral; Length of Frontal scale-7.0 mm; distance from the tip of the rostral- 7.0 mm; Parietal longer than wide; Two Anterior Temporals; One Supraocular on each side of head; One Preocular on each side of head; Two Postoculars on each side of head; Eight Supralabial on each side of head; 2 nd touching prefrontal; 3 rd and 4 th touching the eye; 5 th broken; Eight Infralabials on right and nine on left side of head, cuneate scales present, 3 infralabials touching the chin shields; Chin shield well developed; both the pairs not in contact with each other; Scales around neck 34; Scales around Midbody 39; Ventrals 327, distinct from the adjacent dorsal scales; Preanal enlarged; No keel present on dorsal scales. Head width 15.1 mm; Head depth 13.7 mm; Head length 29.7 mm; Snout to Vent length 1340.0 mm; Tail length 113.0 mm. Dorsally and ventrally the entire body light brown. Body encircled with dark brown bands, broader dorsally, disappearing ventrally. Number of bands 62 around the body till vent; Five dark brown bands on tail.

Remarks. This specimen and nominal taxon was curiously absent in the works of both Wall (1906) and Smith (1926). It was however mentioned as present in the ZSI collection by Das et al. (1998). Boulenger (1890) did not list H. crassicollis as a synonym of H. cyanocinctus . Sclater (1891) listed H. crassicollis [as crassicollas] under the synonymy of H. cyanocinctus and this arrangement was followed by ( Boulenger 1896; Wall 1906, 1907; Smith 1926).

Figures

FIGURE 2. Holotype of Hydrophis crassicollis ZSI 8272, dorsal (top), ventral (middle) and lateral (bottom) aspects. Photograph by Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata.