Abstract:
The island of New Guinea has been identified as biologically
megadiverse but many taxa are still poorly known. This is espe cially the case for many of the island’s snakes, which by their very
nature can be difficult to collect and study. Here we examine the
phylogenetic and phylogeographic structure of a poorly studied
snake genus, Stegonotus, focusing on the species of New Guinea;
until now, Stegonotus has never been examined using modern
phylogenetic methods. Using molecular data from 49 individuals
representing eight of the ten described species, and including all
New Guinea taxa, we estimate a multilocus phylogeny and exam ine population structure to help identify undescribed taxa. We use
morphological data from the corresponding museum vouchered
specimens (where available) and also examine additional speci mens for taxa not included in the molecular data set to determine
morphological differences among putative taxa. We find molecular
evidence for four new species of Stegonotus, both morphologically
obvious and cryptic, and describe them herein. The recognition of
these four species indicates that Stegonotus diversity has been
previously underestimated and also suggests that there are likely
additional undescribed taxa within the genus. These four taxa
increase the number of described species by 40% and further
confirm New Guinea as the centre of diversity for the genus
