Stegonotus diehli Lindholm, 1905 :236

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 : 45-46

Stegonotus diehli Lindholm, 1905:236

Taxonomic status. Valid.

Synonyms. Stegonotus dorsalis Werner, 1924 .

Original name. Stegonotus diehli Lindholm, 1905:236 . Wilhelm Adolfovich Lindholm (1874–1935; Fig. 17H ) was a Russian malacologist and herpetologist ( Adler 2007), who worked as a scientific adviser at the natural history museum in Wiesbaden, Germany from 1900–1907. He then became a member of the curatorial staff at the Zoological Museum of Moscow Imperial University (now Moscow State University) and in 1914 took the position of Curator of Mollusks at the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg (later Petrograd, then Leningrad). Lindholm named this species in honor of the German Protestant missionary Wilhelm Diehl (1874–1940), who spent 18 years in German New Guinea, then known as Kaiser-Wilhelmsland ( Diehl 2015 18) and who, in 1905, sent a small herpetological collection to Eduard Lampe (1871–1919), at the time museum curator in Wiesbaden ( Lindholm 1905). Lampe asked Lindholm to identify and describe the specimens. The species description was presented in German. The photograph of Lindholm ( Fig. 17H ; public domain) is from the obituary published by Hesse (1936).

Holotype. MWNH 1244 , a juvenile of unknown sex ( Fig. 25 ; Table 1).

Type locality. “Bogadjim an der Astrolabe Bai in Deutsch-Neuguinea” [Bogadjim, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, ca. 5.45°S, 145.75°E]. Bogadjim was a native New Guinean settlement, where a Protestant mission was founded in 1887. Adjacent to the village, the German colonial government subsequently built a settlement called Stephansort beginning in 1889, which disappeared again at the end of the German colonial period.

18. This citation is obviously for a posthumous publication, Wilhelm Diehl having died in 1940. However, Diehl kept meticulous diaries, which had been unpublished and were collated and made available for the first time in this volume.

Collection. According to the text preceding the formal description of S. diehli , a shipment of specimens collected by Diehl was received in Wiesbaden in July 1905. There is no mention of prior shipments or collection dates, and it is therefore not possible to pinpoint the collection of the holotype with any precision.

Key characteristics of the holotype. O (196) mm SVL + O (56) mm TL = O (252) mm TTL. V? = 175 (179), SC? = 80 (82), SCR? = 0.31 (0.31), D = O-15-O (15-15-15), SL E = 3+4 (3+4), SL = 7 (7), IL = 8 (8), IL G = 4 (4).

Key characteristics of the species. Along with the names cucullatus , modestus , and parvus , diehli is one of four species names that have been applied to a large number of Stegonotus specimens in museum collections and, just like the other three, it has been applied across all regions of New Guinea. However, we do not believe that the name has been applied consistently or with the data from the holotype in mind, given the variation in pholidosis and coloration we have observed among specimens bearing the diehli name. We are currently engaged in a more detailed analysis to determine what represents S. diehli sensu stricto (C. Kaiser et al., in prep.).

In the meantime, our species-level assessment of S. diehli is limited, but specimens with values of D = 15-15- 15, SL E = 3+4, SL = 7, IL = 8, and IL G = 4, with relatively low ventral and subcaudal scale counts (V <180, SC <85; values based on the holotype counts and considering standard deviations in these values in other Stegonotus species). However, values outside of these parameters may, probably rarely, occur in conspecifics.

Comments. Lindholm (1905) stated in the original description that he considered this specimen to be “ein jüngeres gut erhaltenes Stück” [a juvenile well-preserved exemplar]. We have seen a variety of juvenile Stegonotus among the hundreds of specimens we have examined, and the color pattern of the head detailed by Lindholm exists in many of these. We are uncertain about the influence of preservatives on some of these markings, and the color in some juvenile specimens has clearly become bleached over time, but we have ascertained that this pattern is not unique to juveniles of S. diehli . It certainly exists in juvenile individuals with D = 17-17-15, SL E = 4+5, SL = 8 or 9, IL = 9 or 10, and IL G = 5. Juvenile head patterning therefore does not present a suitable set of features for species-level diagnosis in Stegonotus .

Figures

FIGURE 17. Selected 19 th and 20 th Century authors and collectors of Stegonotus species. (A) Giacomo Doria (1840–1913), author of the species names aruensis and keyensis. (B) Odoardo Beccari (1843–1920), collector of the Stegonotus aruensis and S. keyensis type specimens. (C) William Macleay (1820–1891), author of the genus name Herbertophis and the species names darnleyensis and plumbeus. (D) John Archibald Boyd (1846–1926), collector of the Herbertophis plumbeus holotype. (E) George Albert Boulenger (1858–1937), author of the species names guentheri, heterurus, and reticulatus. Image licensed for use, © National Portrait Galley, London, United Kingdom. (F) The Reverend George Brown (1835–1917), collector of the Stegonotus heterurus syntypes from Duke of York Island. (G) Albert Stewart Meek (1871–1943), collector of the Stegonotus guentheri and S. reticulatus syntypes. (H) Wilhelm Adolfovich Lindholm (1874–1935), author of the species name diehli. (I) Nelly de Rooij (1883–1964), author of the species name florensis. (J) Franz Werner (1867–1939), author of the species names dorsalis and poechi. (K) Rudolf Pöch (1870–1921), collector of the Stegonotus dorsalis and S. poechi holotypes, and in whose honor the latter was named. (L) Lothar Forcart (1902–1990), author of the species name sutteri.

FIGURE 25. Holotype of Stegonotus diehli Lindholm, 1905, MWNH 1244, a juvenile from Bogadjim, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Shown are the entire specimen (TTL = 252 mm) in (A) dorsal and (B) ventral views, and its head in (C) dorsal, (D) right lateral, and (E) ventral views.