PROC. BIOL. SOC. WASH. 107(1), 1994, pp. 60-66 A NEW SPECIES OF MONTANE PITVIPER (SERPENTES: VIPERIDAE: BOTHROPS) FROM COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA Michael B. Harvey Abstract.— Bothwps jonathani is a new species described from the Bohvian ahiplano and adjacent xeric mountain sides, an area previously unknown to be inhabited by any species of pitviper. The new taxon is distantly allopatric from its most phenotypically similar congener B. alternatus. The new species is distinguished from other Bothwps by higher scale counts, relatively short hemipenial spines, a unique color pattern, and distinct prelacunal and second supralabial. Many of the forty-one (Campbell & La-mar 1989, 1992) currently recognized spe-cies of South American crotalines are rarely collected and remain poorly known despite recent advances in their study. South Amer-ican species formerly referred to Bothwps (sensu lato) were placed in five genera (Bur-ger 1971, Perez-Higareda et al. 1985, Campbell & Lamar 1989). Evidence that three of these genera are monophyletic has recently come from biochemical and ana-tomical characters (Werman 1992), while the same analysis showed that Bothwps (sensu Burger 1971) is polyphyletic ifBoth-riopsis is recognized. Within Bothwps (sen-su stricto), evidence in support of two monophyletic lineages referred to loosely as the ""neuwiedi" and "a/rax" groups was provided (Werman 1992). However, these groups have yet to be formally defined or diagnosed. Although several crotalines occur at high elevations in the Andes, most species in-habit cloud forest or wet, upper montane forest. Only two species, Bothwps lojanus and B. ammodytoides occur in relatively xeric habitats above 2000 m and no pitvi-pers are known from the altiplano of Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. Incidental to re-search (Harvey & Smith 1993, 1994) in the cis-Andean cloud forests of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba, Bolivia, a small herpetolog-ical collection was made in the altiplano and adjacent intermontane valleys of Cocha-bamba. Among material collected were two pitvipers herein described as a new species. Methods A string and meter stick were used to measure snout-vent length (SVL), tail length (TL), and tail circumference (TC) at the lev-el of the sixth subcaudal. With a dial caliper, distances were measured to the nearest 0. 1 mm from the antero-ventral comer of the skin surrounding the eye to the caudal bor-der of the pit (EP), the antero-dorsal border of the skin surrounding the eye to the center of the nostril (EN), the caudo-dorsal to an-tero-ventral edges of the skin surrounding the eye (ED), and from the tip of the snout to the skin covering the caudalmost tip of the articular (HL). Nomenclature for the hemipenis is that of Dowling & Savage (1960). Scale counts of the new taxon were compared with ranges of other species re-ported by Campbell & Lamar (1989) and specimens examined in this study (Appen-dix).
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