Sexual Dimorphism and Geographic Variation in the Asian Lance-headed Pitviper Protobothrops mucrosquamatus in the Mainland China
- Resource Type
- Academic Journal
- Authors
- Guanghui ZHONG; Qin LIU; Cao LI; Peihao PENG; Peng GUO
- Source
- 亚洲两栖爬行动物研究(英文版) / Asian Herpetological Research. 8(2):118-122
- Subject
- morphology
sexual dimorphism
geographic variation
venomous snake
intraspecific taxonomy
Protobothrops mucrosquamatus
China
- Language
- Chinese
- ISSN
- 2095-0357
Sexual dimorphism (SD) and geographic variation (GV) are widespread in snakes. Protobothrops mucrosquamatus (Cantor 1839) is one of the most common Asian venomous snakes with a wide geographical distribution. We examined SD and GV patterns for this species by using multivariate statistical analyses of external morphological characters scored from specimens from the Mainland China. The result displayed that SD was significant in several external characters in P. mucrosquamatus, and the male P. mucrosquamatus formed two distinct clusters (Hainan Island and mainland China), but the females did not. Based on our present work and the other data, we concluded that no significantly intraspecific differentiation is present within this species.