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Abstract The common bronzeback tree snake Dendrelaphis tristis is reported from the hilly terrain of Margalla Hills National Park, Islamabad. This represents the first well documented record of this species from Pakistan. The status of one specimen housed in the Natural History Museum, London purportedly collected in Pakistan in 1860 is discussed.
Keywords: Dendrelaphis tristis, new record, Colubridae, Himalayan foothills, Margalla Hills.
The genus Dendrelaphis Boulenger, 1890 (Colubridae) is widely distributed, from Pakistan westward to the northern and eastern coasts of Australia and northward into southern China (Ziegler and Vogel, 1999). Members of the genus Dendrelaphis are slender, diurnal species that are predominantly arboreal, feeding mainly on lizards and amphibians. The common bronzeback tree snake, Dendrelaphis tristis (Daudin, 1803), ranges from Sri Lanka northward through most of India to Myanmar and Nepal (Van Rooijen and Vogel, 2008).
A single specimen housed in the Natural History Museum, London (BMNH 60.3.19.1441) is purportedly from Sindh Province, Pakistan. It is part of a large Indian collection made by the Schlagintweit brothers and presented to the British Museum in 1860 (Boulenger, 1894). It is an adult female with 185 ventrals, 127 subcaudals, and other scale counts typical of Dendrelaphis tristis. The handwritten label is almost illegible, but appears to read "Sabzil Kot", Sindh, close to the mouth of the river.' Minton (1966) was unable to find this locality on any map. Jeremie A. Anderson and his collectors made special efforts to find this snake in oases in the Thar Desert, but were unsuccessful (Minton, 1966). The species is, however, reported from Shoolpaneshwar, Vansda and Purna Wildlife Sanctuaries, Gujarat, India bordering east of Sindh Province (Vyas, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2011).
Extensive surveys by staff of Pakistan Museum of Natural History in different parts of Cholistan and the Thar deserts also failed to find this species (Baig et al., 2008: Masroor, unpublished).
Materials and methods During recent extensive herpetological surveys of the Margalla Hills National Park, Islamabad (Masroor, unpublished), two unidentified dead specimens were collected and then deep-frozen, both on trail # 5 (Fig. 1), in 2008 (33° 45' 30.33" N, 73° 04' 51.99" E) and 2010 (33° 44' 47.27" N, 73° 05' 10.67" E) by Z. B. Mirza and Shadmeena Khanum, respectively. The author received two images of live snakes...