Spilotes sulphureus Wagler , 1824 ( Squamata : Colubridae ) : review of distribution and first record in the state of Sergipe , northeastern Brazil

We present the first record of Spilotes sulphureus for the state of Sergipe. In Brazil, this species is distributed Amazon Rainforest, Atlantic Forest and Caatinga biomes. This large-bodied snake has arboreal habit, is diurnal, has oviparous reproduction, feeds on birds, eggs, lizards, bats, amphibians and small mammals and presents the defensive behaviour of lateral compression of the body.

The colubrid snake Spilotes sulphureus (Wagler & Spix, 1824) is one of the larger species of the family (Freitas 2003).This species was previously placed in the genus Pseustes, 1843 and was later allocated to the present genus (Jadin et al. 2014).This arboreal snake has cryptic coloration and is characterized by the defensive behavior of lateral compression of the body (Marques et al. 2006).
The specimens were collected under permit 34437-1 issued by ICMBio and are housed in the snake collection of the Laboratório de Biologia e Ecologia de Vertebrados  Spilotes sulphureus presents the following characters: dorsal scale rows 21, scales keeled and with one pair apical pits; subcaudals paired, 122; ventrals 215; anal plate divided; internasals in contact with rostral, anterior and posterior nasal and prefrontals; prefrontals in contact with frontal, posterior nasal, loreal, preocular, and supraocular; frontal in contact with prefrontals, supraocular and parientals; supraocular 1; postorbitals 3; preorbital 1; upper labials 8; lower labials 10; anterior mentals in contact with the mental groove and posterior mentals separated by small gular scales (Lisboa et al. 2009).
Spilotes sulphureus may exhibit polymorphism in color.
Some individuals are yellow-brown with variable black bars on the dorsum, head and upper labials, and yellow venter (Cunha et al. 1985) (Figure 1).Other individuals are immaculate yellow anteriorly, becoming darker posteriorly (Figure 2), as in Borges-Nojosa et al. (2006).Most records of S. sulphureus are from the Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes (Figure 3), likely associated with the arboreal habit of the species (Martins et al. 2008).This snake is diurnal (Freitas 2003), feeds on birds (Rivas and Kane 2003;Alves et al. 2005), bats (Rufino and Bernardi 1999), lizards, small mammals, and amphibians (Marques et al. 2001;Freitas 2003).This paper presents the first record of this species from the state of Sergipe (Figure 3).The new location is 125 km  1. south of the nearest locality at Pindoba Farm, municipality of Campo Alegre, Alagoas (Lisboa et al. 2009), and 160 km north of the nearest locality in Bahia (IBSP 49248).The location is 3242 km from the type locality on the Japurá River, Amazonas (Cunha et al. 1985).This new record fills a gap in the distribution of the species, and contributes to knowledge of the biological diversity in Sergipe state, which is relatively poorly known.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Geographic distribution of Spilotes sulphureus in Brazil, based on data from Table1.