Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,
Does anyone know of a good key to identify the different subspecies of Crotalus durissus. Any help will be very much appreciated.
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There are differences in color and pattern but many are very simaler. There are only a few out of the many sub speices available in the US market. Those available are distiguishable from each other to some degree. Unfortunatley I am sure some have been cross bred without having ment to .Mardi Snipes web page Costal Reptiles has some good pics. The ones commonly avaliable are terificus, cummensis, and dryanus. Others pop up somtimes bot not often. Please forgive my spelling. I know it isn't the best. I hope this helps a little. If you have a particular animal you want ID.ed post it and I or someone should be able to identify it for you.
Kevin xeropaga1@YAHOO.COM

Honestly, there really isn't a good key, and in fact there are studies being done to see if the entire complex shouldn't be re-classified.

The only key I've ever seen that sheds some light, is in Klauber's "Rattlesnakes"--the 2-volume set. It has keys for determining subspecies by geographic ares (i.e., Mexico, Central American, South America)....but if you get them subspecies overlapping, you could probably through that key out the window. Visually....I think it's pretty touch to tell, say a dryanis from a collilineatus.

Some are easier. I've found it's pretty obvious to tell Central American durissus from S. AMerican. Generally, they don't ahve the white highlights around the diamonds, the neck stripes are wider(more scale rows) usually without white highlights, and in general they are the largest of the durissus. This is what my experience has been anyway.

Matt

Gentlemen, thank you for your help. I was hoping there might be a key for Crotolus durissus in German or other language that I was not aware of. Trying to identify the different subspecies by using pictures is very confusing for me. For example, I have some durissus from Guyana that look nothing like the ones pictured in the book "The Venomous Reptiles of Latin America" pages 269-270, Fig.335,342). Hopefully one day someone will come out with a good key for Crotalus durissus.

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Exactly, you literally "See" the confusion. I will say, however, I have used Campbell & Lamar to identify various subspecies of jumping vipers (Atropoides) and those seem to match perfectly.

As I mentioned briefly, when this new study on the durissus complex is published, I think it may shed more light on their taxonomy. Unfortunately, I am "Sworn" to secrecy on it(I took the WW Oath of Silence) on it.

Matt

>>Exactly, you literally "See" the confusion. I will say, however, I have used Campbell & Lamar to identify various subspecies of jumping vipers (Atropoides) and those seem to match perfectly.
>>
>>As I mentioned briefly, when this new study on the durissus complex is published, I think it may shed more light on their taxonomy. Unfortunately, I am "Sworn" to secrecy on it(I took the WW Oath of Silence) on it.

LOL!!!

Seriously, as far as the South American subspecies are concerend, these are extremely ill-defined, and a lot of them should almost certainly be sunk. There is a huge amount of variation in pattern and colour even between neighbouring populations that are otherwise genetically near-identical.

You can get at least an idea of what is happening with C. durissus from the following paper:

WÜSTER, W., M.G. SALOMÃO, J.A. QUIJADA-MASCAREÑAS, R.S. THORPE & B.B.B.S.P. (2002) Origin and evolution of the South American pitviper fauna: evidence from mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis. In Biology of the Vipers (G.W. Schuett, M. Höggren, M.E. Douglas & H.W. Greene, eds.), pp. 111-128. Eagle Mountain Publishing, Eagle Mountain, Utah.

You can download a PDF of the paper from my publications website (Link below)

Cheers,

Wolfgang
WW Publications

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