CHENNAI: A team of researchers from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the United Kingdom have discovered a new species of shieldtail snake in the Meghamalai-Munnar hill region of the Western Ghats.
Shieldtail snakes are a non-venomous, small, and fascinating group of burrowing snakes with over 50 species identified from the Western Ghats. These snakes spend most of their life underground and emerge during the monsoons for breeding.
The discovery was recently published in the international journal Zootaxa. One of the authors of the study, Surya Narayanan from Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) Bengaluru, told TNIE the new species, which is now named as Tail-spot Shieldtail, was long confused with a similar-looking species called the Palni Shieldtail (Uropeltis pulneyensis) from the Kodaikanal region. The name, Uropeltis caudomaculata, refers to the lateral yellow spot on each side of the base of the tail.
“We were working on a project called ‘Sky Islands’, which is nothing but high elevation shola-grassland-forest mosaics in the Western Ghats that are home to diverse endemic species. My colleague from ATREE and co-author of the study Jason D Gerard stumbled upon the new species specimen in Megamalai in 2021-22.
It took us three years of fieldwork and careful examination of several specimens at the National History Museum that were collected during the British period along with DNA data, to find the distinction. This shieldtail snake from the Meghamalai-Munnar Hills is a new species previously unknown to science,” Narayanan said.
Other authors of the study are David J Gower from the National History Museum in the United Kingdom, Sandeep Das from Calicut University in Kerala and V Deepak from the Wildlife Institute of India.
The researchers said the shola grasslands are highly patchy, discontinuous ‘sky island’ habitats, which are separated from each other physically and environmentally but have similar communities of species distinct from those elsewhere in the Western Ghats. In the Western Ghats, the shola grassland forests of the Agasthyamalai region, Meghamalai, Anamalais, Nilgiris, and Wayanad are some of the important sky islands with rich and unique biodiversity.
The Western Ghats is one of the most diverse regions for reptiles in India, with more than 50% endemic species. Fifteen new species of snakes have been described from the Western Ghats in the past five years. This new discovery highlights the hidden diversity in the area and indicates that many species in this fast-degrading landscape remain unknown to science. The fragile sky islands, in particular, are highly threatened by the rapid encroachment of highly invasive species such as acacia, lantana, wattle, and pine trees.