Boiga multomaculata (Boie, 1827)

Köhler, Gunther, Charunrochana, Panupong Thammachoti, Mogk, Linda, Than, Ni Lar, Kurniawan, Nia, Kadafi, Ahmad Muammar, Das, Abhijit, Tillack, Frank & O’Shea, Mark, 2023, A taxonomic revision of Boiga multomaculata (Boie, 1827) and B. ochracea (Theobald, 1868), with the description of a new subspecies (Squamata, Serpentes, Colubridae), Zootaxa 5270 (2), pp. 151-193 : 152-154

Boiga multomaculata

Dipsas multomaculata was described by Heinrich Boie’s elder brother Friedrich (1789–1870), in Latin and German ( Boie 1827), and published in the year of Heinrich’s death. It has been suggested that Friedrich Boie attributed his description to H. Boie’s (1823 –1825) “Erpétologie de Java ” ( Wallach et al. 2014). The latter work was never published and names proposed therein are considered unavailable for the purposes of nomenclature, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature ( ICZN 1999; ICZN 2012), hereafter referred to as “the Code”. However, F. Boie does not actually cite his brother’s unpublished work in his D. multomaculata species account. Rather he cites the Prussian-born Dutch pharmacist and botanist Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (1773–1854), yet no Reinwardt 1825 paper describing this taxon exists and it must be assumed that F. Boie was the person who introduced this binomen. Since Boie does attribute the taxon name to Reinwardt the degree of his involvement must therefore be determined. If Reinwardt just contributed the name with the specimen the citation would be Dipsas multomaculata F. Boie, 1827 , but if he contributed both the name and a description of sorts, then the citation should be Dipsas multomaculata Reinwardt in F. Boie, 1827 (Aaron Bauer, pers. comm.). It would appear that the first scenario is correct (see also David & Vogel 1996:21). Thus, the author citation is F. Boie, 1827 not Reinwardt in F. Boie, 1827 because F. Boie attributes the name to Reinwardt but not the description. Schlegel (1826:238) also attributes the description of Dipsas multomaculata to Reinwardt when he writes „Gen. DIPSAS Laur. Cuo, Esp. …… Col. multimaculatus (sic) Reinw. N. esp. …”

There is nothing in F. Boie’s account to suggest he referred to his brother’s unpublished manuscript for his description of D. multomaculata . However, the comparison of H. Boie´s manuscript part for “ Dipsas multimaculata ” and Friedrich Boie’s (1827) text on “[ Dipsas ] multomaculata ”, which we regard as the original description, shows, that the latter is a verbatim copy of H. Boie´s manuscript with the exception of the different spelling of the species name and the reference to images which depict this species in earlier classical works.

The primary types of this taxon have been stated to be unlocated ( Nguyen et al. 2009; Uetz et al. 2019), as deposited in “RMNH” ( Iskandar & Colijn 2002) or listed with incorrect quantity, syntype composition, and collectors ( Wallach et al. 2014). They are actually present in the collection of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center (formerly Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Histoire, Leiden, Netherlands) and have been examined by one of the authors (FT).

The enquiries in Leiden by FT and MOS revealed that H. Boie wrote his manuscript between 1823 and 1825, i.e., before his departure for Java. However, this also means that the material he and Macklot collected on Java between June 1826 and September 1827 (= RMNH 978a+b) was not available to him when he wrote his manuscript. Thus, material used for the description must have already been in the Leiden collection. Therefore, only material that was previously collected by Kuhl and van Hasselt or Reinwardt would have been available to him and are very likely the specimens listed under RMNH 979. The material collected by H. Boie and Macklot (RMNH 978a+b) could never have been part of the type series of D. multomaculata because F. Boie (1827) added nothing new to his brother’s text. It has to be noted that the order of the inventory numbers does not relate to the order of accession into the Leiden collection. A specimen (i.e., ZMB 2642) in the collection of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin very likely also belonged to the original type series of D. multomaculata . According to a letter dated “Leyden, 2 nd April 1825 ” (preserved in the Dept. of Historical Research of Berlin Museum, Acta Sign. ZM, Dr. Temminck, Leyden, 1818), Heinrich Boie wrote to Martin Hinrich Carl Lichtenstein (1780–1857, Director of the ZMB at that time) and offered him beside many other specimens from Java under list number “38” a specimen of “ Dipsas multimaculata ” for the price of 1 [Reichsthaler]. The same specimen appeared with the same number and same price in a list written by Lichtenstein documenting the arrival of the objects with the following title [translation by us]: „List of the objects sent by Mr. Temminck from Leyden and arrived at the Museum [Berlin] on 9 March 1826 “. These hitherto unnoticed documents suggest that the specimen of D. multomaculata offered by H. Boie to the Berlin Museum in April 1825 must have belonged to the original type series and was probably collected by Kuhl and Van Hasselt and available to H. Boie when he worked on his manuscript. In addition, the scalation values of ZMB 2642 are within the variation given by H. Boie in his manuscript. The main reason why this specimen has not been considered as a type specimen so far is probably the fact that it is linked only to Coenraad Jacob Temminck (director of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden and treasurer of the Dutch East India Company) who is cited as the donor in the Berlin Museum inventory catalogue and no one had previously evaluated the associated correspondence.

Only RMNH 979 (a jar which contains six specimens) and the specimen later sent to the Zoologisches Museum Berlin were available for H. Boie’s manuscript. Of the six specimens under RMNH 979 only specimen b, d, e and f (all females) fit the scalation data of H. Boie (manuscript) and F. Boie (1827). Thus, in our opinion, the extant syntype series of D. multomaculata F. Boie 1827 consists of ZMB 2642 and four out of the six specimens listed under RMNH 979.

The German naturalists Heinrich Boie (1794–1827) and Heinrich Christian Macklot (1799–1832) visited Java between December 1825 and September 1827. Esther Dondorp ( Senior Collection Manager ) and Karien Lahaise ( Naturalis archivist) informed MOS that according to an unpublished manuscript by Marinus Hoogmoed “ H. Boie and Macklot arrived in Java on 6 June 1826. On December 28, 1826 they travelled to Krawang (Tjikao) [now Karawang, a town in West Java regency, Tjikao, now Ci Kao, is a watercourse south of Karawang]. H. Boie died on 4 September 1827 ”. Thus , the dates that both were working in Java together and collected these specimens may therefore be defined more accurately as 6 June 1826 to 4 September 1827. The two were in the employ of the Rijksmuseum voor Natuurlijke Historie (RMNH), as part of the Natuurkundige Commissie voor Nederlandsche Indie (Commission for Natural Sciences of the East Indies ).

In all documents (letters and manuscript) from H. Boie’s hand and publications based on H. Boie’s manuscript or written notifications by him (e.g., Schlegel 1826 and 1827) the spelling “ multimaculata ” is used exclusively. This also applies to the Leiden catalogue entries. Although this is to be taken as a clear expression of his will, we have to accept Friedrich Boie´s (1827) “ multomaculata ”, since the latter is responsible for the valid introduction of the name in the sense of the Code, Art. 50.1. This is also in line with the statements of David & Vogel (1996:21).

Numerous authors erroneously referred to this species as Dipsas multimaculatus or D. multimaculata (e.g., Duméril et al. 1854b; Duméril et al. 1854a; Theobald 1868b; Boulenger 1890), and this misspelling of multomaculata as multimaculatus would continue when Boulenger (1896) placed the rear-fanged Asian cat snakes into the resurrected Dipsadomorphus , and even when they were transferred to Boiga by Smith (1923). In recent years most authors have been careful to use F. Boie’s correct spelling Boiga multomaculata .

A number of obscure names have been proposed as synonyms of B. multomaculata . Wallach et al. (2014) suggested Coluber aldrovandi Merrem, 1820 , to be a synonym of this taxon. However, reading Merrem´s description (1820:125) it becomes obvious that it is not even a Boiga because some of the main characters noted by Merrem, e.g., keeled scales, head pointedly rounded, and the absence of a loreal scale are not characteristic for this genus. Also the values for ventrals (121) and subcaudals (49) of Merrem´s aldrovandi are far outside the range of B. multomaculata (see Table 1 ). Their action to declare Dipsas multomaculata a nomen protectum with priority over “ Coluber aldrovandi ” is therefore obsolete. Furthermore, Merrem´s taxon was not described in the combination with the genus name Coluber but with „ Natrix “. The name “ Natrix sturmii ” is based on an unpublished manuscript dated around 1825 by Johann Georg Wagler (1800–1832) (pers. comm. Van Wallach 17 March 2022) and is considered nomen ineditum because it was not been properly published according to the Code.

Rudolf Emil Mell (1878–1970) was a German school-teacher and amateur naturalist collector working in China in the early 20 th Century. He returned to Germany in May 1921 and later proposed several subspecies of B. multomaculatus ( Mell 1931) , i.e., B. m. hainanensis, B. m. indica, and B. m. sikiangensis but these taxa have been considered synonyms of B. multomaculata since their inception (e.g., Pope 1935; Bourret 1936; Smith 1943). Whereas the syntypes of B. m. sikiangensis are known (i.e. ZMB 49427, 50879, 52642), no type material is known to exist for B. m. hainanensis or B. m. indica. The type localities of B. m. hainanensis (“Hainan”) and B. m. sikiangensis (“Kwangtung ( Hongkong)”) are more precise than the one given for B. m. indica (“continental India ”), especially since continental India at that time included Sikkim, Assam, Bengal (including today’s Bangladesh), Burma ( Myanmar), and Pakistan.

The various author’s copies of this publication that Mell distributed, including the one in the departmental herpetological library at Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut, contain a handwritten correction of B. m. hainanensis to “ sikiangensis Mell”. Presumably, the author had a change of mind regarding his taxon name, but this has no nomenclatorial relevance. As far as we know, Mell never corrected it formally in a subsequent publication and the introduction of the name hainanensis must be regarded as valid published in the sense of the Code. At the time of writing Mell’s subspecies were not listed in the Reptile Database ( Uetz et al. 2022).