Product Code Database
Elapidae (, commonly known as elapids , from , variant of "sea-fish") is a family of characterized by their permanently erect fangs at the front of the mouth. Most elapids are venomous, with the exception of the genus Emydocephalus. Many members of this family exhibit a threat display of rearing upwards while spreading out a neck flap. Elapids are endemic to tropics and subtropics regions around the world, with terrestrial forms in Asia, Australia, Africa, and the Americas and marine forms in the Pacific Ocean and . Members of the family have a wide range of sizes, from the white-lipped snake to the king cobra. Most species have neurotoxins venom that is channeled by their hollow fangs, and some may contain other toxic components in varying proportions. The family includes 55 genera with around 360 species and over 170 subspecies.
Sea snakes (the Hydrophiinae), sometimes considered to be a separate family, have adapted to a marine way of life in different ways and to various degrees. All have evolved paddle-like tails for swimming and the ability to excrete salt. Most also have laterally compressed bodies, their ventral scales are much reduced in size, their nostrils are located dorsally (no internasal scales), and they give birth to live young (viviparity). The reduction in ventral scaling has greatly diminished their terrestrial mobility, but aids in swimming.
Members of this family have a wide range of sizes. Drysdalia species are small serpents typically and down to in length. Cobras, , and are mid- to large sized snakes which can reach or above. The king cobra is the world's longest venomous snake with a maximum length of and an average mass of .
In general, sea snakes are able to respire through their skin. Experiments with the yellow-bellied sea snake, Hydrophis platurus, have shown that this species can satisfy about 20% of its oxygen requirements in this manner, allowing for prolonged dives. The sea kraits (Laticauda) are the sea snakes least adapted to aquatic life. Their bodies are less compressed laterally, and they have thicker bodies and ventral scaling. Because of this, they are capable of some land movement. They spend much of their time on land, where they lay their eggs and digest prey.
The venom of spitting cobras is more cytotoxic rather than neurotoxic. It damages local cells, especially those in eyes, which are deliberately targeted by the snakes. The venom may cause intense pain on contact with the eye and may lead to blindness. It is not lethal on skin if no wound provides any chance for the toxins to enter the blood.
The type genus for the Elapidae was originally Elaps, but the group was moved to another family. In contrast to what is typical of botany, the family Elapidae was not renamed. In the meantime, Elaps was renamed Homoroselaps and moved back to the Elapidae. However, Nagy et al. (2005) regard it as a sister taxon to Atractaspis, which should have been assigned to the Atractaspididae.
| Acanthophis | Daudin, 1803 | 8 | 0 | death adders | Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia (Seram Island and Tanimbar Islands) |
| Aipysurus | Lacépède, 1804 | 7 | 1 | olive sea snakes | Timor Sea, South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand, and coasts of Australia (Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia), New Caledonia, Loyalty Islands, southern New Guinea, Indonesia, western Malaysia and Vietnam |
| Antaioserpens | Wells & , 1985 | 2 | 0 | burrowing snakes | Australia |
| Aspidelaps | Fitzinger, 1843 | 2 | 4 | shieldnose cobras | South Africa (Cape Province, Transvaal), Namibia, southern Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique |
| Aspidomorphus | Fitzinger, 1843 | 3 | 3 | collared adders | New Guinea |
| Austrelaps | Eric Worrell, 1963 | 3 | 0 | Australian copperheads | Australia (South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania) |
| Brachyurophis | Günther, 1863 | 7 | 0 | shovel-nosed snakes | Australia |
| Bungarus | Daudin, 1803 | 12 | 4 | kraits | India (incl. Andaman Islands), Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia (Java, Sumatra, Bali, Sulawesi), Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand |
| Cacophis | Günther, 1863 | 4 | 0 | rainforest crowned snakes | Australia (New South Wales, Queensland) |
| Calliophis | Gray, 1834 | 15 | 11 | Oriental coral snakes | India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, southern China, Japan (Ryukyu Islands), Taiwan |
| Cryptophis | Worrell, 1961 | 5 | 0 | Australia and Papua New Guinea | |
| Demansia | Gray, 1842 | 9 | 2 | whipsnakes | New Guinea, continental Australia |
| Dendroaspis | Hermann Schlegel, 1848 | 4 | 1 | mambas | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Denisonia | Gerard Krefft, 1869 | 2 | 0 | ornamental snakes | Central Queensland and central northern New South Wales, Australia |
| Drysdalia | Worrell, 1961 | 3 | 0 | southeastern grass snakes | Southern Australia (Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales) |
| Echiopsis | Fitzinger, 1843 | 1 | 0 | bardick | Southern Australia (Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales) |
| Elapognathus | Boulenger, 1896 | 2 | 0 | southwestern grass snakes | Western Australia |
| Elapsoidea | Bocage, 1866 | 10 | 7 | African or venomous garter snakes (not related to North American garter snakes, which are harmless to humans) | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Emydocephalus | Krefft, 1869 | 3 | 0 | turtlehead sea snakes | The coasts of Timor (Indonesian Sea), New Caledonia, Australia (Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia), and in the Southeast Asian Sea along the coasts of China, Taiwan, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands |
| Ephalophis | M.A. Smith, 1931 | 1 | 0 | Grey's mudsnake/ mangrove sea snake | Northwestern Australia |
| Furina | A.M.C. Duméril, 1853 | 5 | 0 | pale-naped snakes | Mainland Australia, southern New Guinea, Aru Islands |
| Hemachatus | Fleming, 1822 | 1 | 0 | rinkhals/ring-necked spitting cobra | South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini |
| Hemiaspis | Fitzinger, 1861 | 2 | 0 | swamp snakes | Eastern Australia (New South Wales, Queensland) |
| Hemibungarus | Wilhelm Peters, 1862 | 3 | 0 | Barred coral snakes | Philippines (Luzon, Panay, Negros, Cebu, Mindoro, Catanduanes, Polillo is.) |
| Hoplocephalus | Wagler, 1830 | 3 | 0 | broad-headed snakes | Eastern Australia (New South Wales, Queensland) |
| Hydrelaps | Boulenger, 1896 | 1 | 0 | Port Darwin mudsnake | Northern Australia, southern New Guinea |
| Hydrophis | Latreille In Sonnini & Latreille, 1801 | 34 | 3 | sea snakes | Indoaustralian and Southeast Asian waters. The Hydrophiidae at Cyberlizard's home pages . Accessed 12 2007. |
| Incongruelaps† | 1 | 0 | Riversleigh, Australia Scanlon J,Lee M, Archer M, 2002, Mid-Tertiary elapid snakes (Squamata, Colubroidea) from Riversleigh, northern Australia: early steps in a continent-wide adaptive radiation, Geobios 36 (2003) 573–601 . | ||
| Laticauda | Laurenti, 1768 | 5 | 0 | sea kraits | Southeast Asian and Indo-Australian waters |
| Loveridgelaps | , 1970 | 1 | 0 | Solomons small-eyed snake | Solomon Islands |
| Microcephalophis | Lesson, 1832 | 1 | 0 | narrow-headed sea snake, graceful small-headed slender seasnake, common small-headed sea snake | on the coasts of the Indian Ocean and West Pacific, from around the Persian Gulf (Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iran, Iraq and Kuwait) to Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia, and into the Malay Archipelago/West Pacific in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, southern China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as in Australia (Queensland) and Papua New Guinea |
| Micropechis | Boulenger, 1896 | 1 | 0 | New Guinea small-eyed snake | New Guinea |
| Micruroides | K.P. Schmidt, 1928 | 1 | 2 | Western coral snakes | United States (Arizona, southwestern New Mexico), Mexico (Sonora, Sinaloa) |
| Micrurus | Wagler, 1824 | 83 | 51 | coral snakes | Southern North America, South America |
| Naja | Laurenti, 1768 | 39 | 3 | cobras | Africa, Asia |
| Neelaps | (A.M.C. Duméril, Gabriel Bibron & A.H.A. Duméril, 1854) | 2 | 0 | Australia | |
| Notechis | Boulenger, 1896 | 1 | 0 | tiger snake | Southern Australia, including many offshore islands |
| Ogmodon | Wilhelm Peters, 1864 | 1 | 0 | bola | Fiji |
| Ophiophagus | Günther, 1864 | 4 | 1 | King cobra | Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, China, India, Andaman Islands, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, western Malaysia, the Philippines |
| Oxyuranus | Kinghorn, 1923 | 3 | 2 | taipans | Australia, New Guinea |
| Parahydrophis | & Natsuno, 1974 | 1 | 0 | Northern mangrove sea snake | Northern Australia, southern New Guinea |
| Parapistocalamus | Jean Roux, 1934 | 1 | 0 | Hediger's snake | Bougainville Island, Solomons |
| Paroplocephalus | , & , 2000 | 1 | 0 | Lake Cronin snake | Western Australia |
| Pseudechis | Wagler, 1830 | 7 | 0 | black snakes (and king brown) | Australia |
| Pseudohaje | Günther, 1858 | 2 | 0 | tree cobras | Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Nigeria |
| Pseudonaja | Günther, 1858 | 8 | 2 | venomous brown snakes (and dugites) | Australia |
| Rhinoplocephalus | F. Müller, 1885 | 1 | 0 | Müller's snake | Western Australia |
| Salomonelaps | McDowell, 1970 | 1 | 0 | Solomons coral snake | Solomon Islands |
| Simoselaps | Giorgio Jan, 1859 | 13 | 3 | Australian coral snakes | Mainland Australia |
| Sinomicrurus | Slowinski, & , 2001 | 8 | 6 | Asia | |
| Suta | Worrell, 1961 | 11 | 0 | hooded snakes (and curl snake) | Australia |
| Thalassophis | , 1852 | 1 | 0 | anomalous sea snake | South Chinese Sea (Malaysia, Gulf of Thailand), Indian Ocean (Sumatra, Java, Borneo) |
| Toxicocalamus | Boulenger, 1896 | 11 | 0 | New Guinea forest snakes | New Guinea (and nearby islands) |
| Tropidechis | Günther, 1863 | 1 | 0 | rough-scaled snake | Eastern Australia |
| Vermicella | Gray in Günther, 1858 | 6 | 0 | bandy-bandies | Australia |
| Walterinnesia | Fernand Lataste, 1887 | 2Nilson G, Rastegar-Pouyani N (2007). " Walterinnesia aegyptia Lataste, 1887 (Ophidia: Elapidae) and the status of Naja morgani Mocquard, 1905". Russian Journal of Herpetology 14: 7-14. | 0 | black desert cobra | Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, TurkeyUgurtas IH, Papenfuss TJ, Orlov NL (2001). "New record of Walterinnesia aegyptia Lataste, 1887 (Ophidia: Elapidae: Bungarinae) in Turkey". Russian Journal of Herpetology 8 (3): 239-245. |
This however does not touch the number of elapidae that are under threat, for instance 9% of elapid sea snakes are threatened with another 6% near-threatened. Eifes, C.T. & Livingstone 2013. A rather large road block that stands in the way of more species being put under protection is lack of knowledge of the taxa; many known species have little research done on their behaviors or actual population as they live in very remote areas or live in habitats that are so vast its nearly impossible to conduct population studies, like the sea snakes.
|
|
