Micrelaps is a genus of Opisthoglyphous mildly . It is the only genus in the family Micrelapidae. The genus is native to Africa and the Middle East, and there are four species that are recognized as being valid.
Taxonomy
Until very recently, this genus was classified in the family
Atractaspidinae. However, a phylogenomic study published in 2023 on the
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution journal has concluded that the genus should be re-classified into an autonomous family, apart from Atractaspididae, and thus created a new family called
Micrelapidae, which constitutes a new Afro-Asian family of snakes.
Description
Species in the genus
Micrelaps share the following characters: the
maxilla is very short, with two teeth, followed, after an interspace, by a very large grooved fang situated below the eye. The
Mandible teeth are longest anteriorly. The head is small, and is not distinct from the neck. The eye is minute, and the pupil is round or vertically subelliptic. The nostril is pierced in a single
nasal scale. There is no
loreal scale. There are no
Ocular scales, the prefrontal entering the eye. The body is cylindrical, and the tail is short. The
dorsal scales are smooth, without pits, and are in 15 rows at midbody. The
ventral scales are rounded. The
subcaudal scales are in two rows.
[
]
Species
|
| Genus Micrelaps - five species |
|
| M. bicoloratus | Sternfeld, 1908 | moyeri | Kenya two-headed snake | Kenya |
| M. boettgeri | Boulenger, 1896 | ———— | Boettger's two-headed snake | Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda |
| M. muelleri | Oskar Boettger, 1880 | ———— | Mueller's two-headed snake | Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon |
| M. vaillanti | (Mocquard, 1888) | ———— | Somali two-headed snake | Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, eastern Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda |
|
*) Not including the nominate subspecies
T) Type species
Further reading
-
Oskar Boettger (1880). " Die Reptilien und Amphibien von Syrien, Palaestina und Cypern ". Berichte über die Senckenbergische naturforschender Gesellschaft in Frankfurt am Main 1880: 132–219. ( Micrelaps, new genus, p. 136). (in German and Latin).
