Lycodon magnus Meyer, 1874 :136

Kaiser, Christine M., Kaiser, Hinrich & O’Shea, Mark, 2018, The taxonomic history of Indo-Papuan groundsnakes, genus Stegonotus Duméril et al., 1854 (Colubridae), with some taxonomic revisions and the designation of a neotype for S. parvus (Meyer, 1874), Zootaxa 4512 (1), pp. 1-73 : 28-30

Lycodon magnus Meyer, 1874:136

Taxonomic status. Junior synonym of S. cucullatus . The only certain type specimen was destroyed.

Synonyms. None.

Original name. Lycodon magnus Meyer, 1874:136 . Adolf Bernhard Meyer (1840–1911; Fig. 3L ) was a German naturalist and anthropologist, who conducted an expedition to the Malay Archipelago and Papuasia in the early 1870s ( Meyer 1873a, b, 1875). Upon his return, he served as the director of the Königliches Naturhistorisches Museum (now Senckenberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen, Museum für Tierkunde) in Dresden, Germany from 1874–1906. Meyer’s portrait ( Fig. 3L ; public domain) is from ca. 1880. The species description was presented in German. We assume that the species epithet magnus [great] was selected to reflect the size of the specimens available for study.

Syntypes. The assessment of type material for S. magnus is not straightforward. It is clear from the species description that Meyer used a single specimen to report scale characteristics, including counts. However, in the last sentence of the text, after detailing aspects of color and pattern in the species, he stated, “[e]inige Exemplare theilweise geringelt” [some specimens partly banded]. This statement shows that the specimen series available to Meyer included several specimens, and presumably more than two. The Dresden type catalog of Schüz (1929), however, listed only a single specimen of L. magnus (MTKD 573), as does the collection’s specimen ledger. It is therefore reasonable to assume that some of the type material was exchanged to other museums. This specimen, along with most of the remaining alcoholic specimens and the city itself, were destroyed during the night of 13–14 February 1945 in the Allied bombing of Dresden. We were able to locate only one contemporary specimen (ZMB 8794; Fig. 15 ) whose catalog entry lists it as L. magnus with a notation that it is a type specimen (a notation reflected by a label affixed to the jar), and whose characteristics are close to those of MTKD 573 ( Table 1). According to the catalog information, this specimen was also collected by Meyer. The collection locality for the ZMB specimen, however, is flagged with a question mark in the specimen ledger: it is Rubi, a locality 250 km distant at the southern extreme of Cenderawasih Bay (3.3897°S, 135.3179°E). No other specimen from Biak Island we have been able to examine conforms to the middorsal count of 19 reported by Meyer. At this point, we are unable to resolve the conundrum surrounding the type specimens of L. magnus . Nevertheless, in the interest of clarity and stability, we hereby designate MTKD 573, the specimen whose characteristics Meyer (1874) used to describe the scale counts of his new species, as the lectotype of L. magnus (Code, Article 74.7). If and when the need arises to designate a neotype of this species the characteristics of this specimen must therefore inform the selection of a neotype ( ICZN 1999; Article 75).

Type locality. “Neu-Guinea, Mysore.” The locality here identified by Meyer (1874) by the single name “Mysore” actually comprises a complex of two islands separated by only a narrow channel, as described by Meyer (1873b). However, Meyer (1873a, b) decided to use the single name “Mysore” in his collection records for these islands, and he used “Mysore” and “Willem Schoutens Insel ” in popular accounts of his journeys ( Meyer 1873a, b). The island in the east is called Supiori (also Sipiori on historic Dutch maps or Kordo on historic German maps), and the port of Korido on Supiori was where Meyer made landfall ( Meyer 1873a, b; Wichmann 1910). The second, western island, Biak (or Wiak), was at the time considered to be composed of two islands by some, Biak itself and the region around its northernmost tip (called Meossoir on historic Dutch maps, or Misory on historic German maps; Meyer 1873a, b, 1875). Even though Meyer (1887) listed “Kordo” as one of his collecting localities, this was done in reference to L. cucullatus , with which he had synonymized L. magnus . Meyer’s locality was later restricted under the name L. magnus by Schüz (1929), who included the town name “Kordo” [Korido] and added information found in the MTKD specimen ledger. We therefore restrict the type locality of L. magnus to the area around Korido, Supiori Island, Papua Province, Indonesia (ca. 0.8178°S, 135.5643°E).

Collection. According to Meyer (1875) and Wichmann (1910), Meyer arrived in Korido on 25 March 1873 and departed on 5 April. The specimens must therefore have been collected between those dates.

Key characteristics of the lectotype. The information presented here is taken from Meyer (1874). With the destruction of the specimen in 1945, we are unable to provide any first-hand information regarding this specimen’s

characteristics. Based on the SCR value, we believe it was most likely a female and we list it here as such. O (O) mm SVL + O (O) mm TL = O (O) mm TTL. V ♀ = 207 (O), SC ♀ = 74 (O), SCR ♀ = 0.26 (O), D = O-19-O (O), SL E = 4+5 (O), SL = 8 (O), IL = O (O), IL G = O (O).

Key characteristics of the species. See the account of S. cucullatus above.

Comments. The species was synonymized with S. cucullatus by Meyer (1887), who listed it without further comment as part of his account for Lycodon cucullatus .

Figures

FIGURE 3. Selected 19 th Century authors and collectors of Stegonotus species. (A) Hermann Schlegel (1804–1884), author of the species name modestus. (B) André Marie Constant Duméril (1774–1860), co-author with (C) and (D) of the genus name Stegonotus and the species names cucullatus, lividus, and muelleri. (C) Gabriel Bibron (1806–1848). (D) Auguste Henri André Duméril (1812–1870). (E) René-Primevère Lesson (1794–1849), co-collector (with Prosper Garnot; no image available) of the L. cucullatum holotype. (F) Pieter van Oort (1804–1834), co-collector (with Salomon Müller and Heinrich Macklot; no images available) of the L. lividum syntypes. (G) Pieter Bleeker (1819–1878), author of the species names greineri (and perhaps collector of its holotype) and rosenbergii. (H) Hermann von Rosenberg (1817–1888), collector of the Coronella rosenbergii holotype and the person for whom the species was named. (I) Wilhelm Karl Hartwig Peters (1815–1883), author of the species name samarensis. (J) Fedor Jagor (1816–1900), collector of the Spilotes samarensis holotype. (K) Albert Karl Ludwig Gotthilf Günther (1830–1914), author of the genus name Zamenophis as well as the species names holochrous, batjanensis, and australis. The species Stegonotus guentheri was named in Günther’s honor. (L) Adolf Bernhard Meyer (1840–1911), author of the species names magnus and parvus and collector of the type material.

FIGURE 15. Putative syntype of Lycodon magnus Meyer, 1874, ZMB 8794, an adult male from the southern end of Cenderawasih Bay, Papua Province, West New Guinea. Shown are the entire specimen in (A) dorsal and (B) ventral views, and its head in (C) dorsal, (D) right lateral, and (E) ventral views.