TULANE STUDIES IN ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY MUS. CO MP. ZOOL. LIBRARY OCT 71970 Volume 16, Number 4 September Fi^,RM)^D — UNIVER S ITY. A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF UROMACER CATESBYI SCHLEGEL (SERPENTES, COLUBRIDAE) ALBERT SCHWARTZ Department of Biology, Miunu-Dade Junior College, Miami, Florida 33167 Abstract Vromacer eateshtji occurs tlirouuhout Hispaniola and on seven satellite islands. The species is iDolytypic and the followinti subspecies are recognized: U. c. cateshiji (Tiburon Peninsula, ILiiti, west of Mo-mance), L^ c. eereolineaius (Isles Petite and Grande Cayemite, Haiti), U. c. frondi-color (lie de la Conave, Haiti), U. c. hari-olatus ( Haiti, north of the Cul de Sac Plain), L". c. inchausteguii (Isla Saona, Republica Doniinicana ), U. c. insulaerac-carum ( Ile-a-Vache, Haiti), V. c. pampi-neus ( Republica Doniinicana, north of the Valle de Neiba), and V. e. scandax (lie de la Tortue, Haiti). Populations inhabiting the Cul de Sac-Valle de Neilia and the Pe-ninsula de Barahona are assigned intergrade status between cateshiji, hariolatits, and pampineus. The subspecies have differen-tiated in pattern details and in \entral and subcaudal scale counts. Prototype cateshiji presumably divided early into north and south islands populations, the latter with a bold longitudinal line on the lower scale rows. Further differentiation proceeded from these bases; satellite forms are as-sociated with the subspecies on the adja-cent mainland. The colubrid snake genus Uromacer Du-meril and Bibron is one of four endemic colubrid genera on the Antillean island of Hispaniola. Cochran (1941:329 et seq.) recognized six species in the genus: catesbyi Schlegel, 1837; scandax Dunn, 1920; jren-atus Giinther, 1865; wetmorei Cochran, 1931; dorsalis Dunn, 1920; and oxyrhynchus Dumerii and Bibron, 1854. These six species are separable into two groups: one group ( catesbyi, scandax ) has the head only slightly elongate with but little modification in the shape of the preorbital scutellation, whereas the other (the remaining four taxa ) has the head very much attenuate, in the fashion of the better known New World mainland genus Oxybelis. Of the six forms recognized by Cochran, three {scandax. icetyjiorei. dor-salis) were considered to be endemic to His-paniolan satellite islands ( He de la Tortue, Isla Beata, He de la Gonave, respectively). All Uromacer are either green, gray, tan, or some combination of these three basic hues. The long-snouted forms are "vine snakes" in that they are adept climbers and sleep above ground at the tips of branches, whereas the short-snouted forms are apparently somewhat more terrestrial in their activity (but see comments on diet and sites of for-aging by Horn, 1 969 ) . Evidence from field studies indicates that there are fewer than six species of Uromacer. At the time of Cochran's work, many areas of Hispaniola were unrepresented by collec-tions, and these hiatuses in the distribution of members of the genus may have been re-sponsible for Cochran's interpretation of the distinctness of the various taxa. At most, there appear to be three species ( Horn, 1969, recognized four); it is the purpose of this paper to discuss the geographic vari-ation in one of these, U. catesbyi, to which species I assign both of the short-snouted taxa: catesbyi and scandax. I have examined 265 U. catesbyi ( includ-ing U. scandax). Considering the amount of herpetological collecting in Hispaniola in recent years, this is a remarkably small niunber of snakes. There are other specimens Editorial Committee for this Paper: Dr. Edmond V. Malnate, The Academy of Natural Sciences, Nineteenth and the Parkway, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 Dr. Larry David Wilson, Department of Biology, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, Louisiana 70501 131
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