Rhadinella hannsteini, also known commonly as Hannstein's spot-lipped snake and la culebra café labios manchados in Spanish, is a species of snake in the subfamily Dipsadinae of the family Colubridae. The species is native to Central America.
Etymology The specific name, hannsteini, is in honor of coffee grower Walter Bernhard Hannstein (born 1902) on whose plantation the holotype was collected.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . (Rhadinaea hannsteini, p. 115).
Geographic range R. hannsteini is found in southwestern Guatemala and in the adjacent Mexican state of Chiapas. www.reptile-database.org.
Habitat The preferred natural habitat of R. hannsteini is forest, and it is also found in coffee plantations.
Description R. hannsteini is a small snake. The holotype has a snout-to-vent length (SVL) of , plus a tail length of . It has the following scalation: 2 prefrontal scales, 17 dorsal scale rows, 8 upper labials, 1 postocular.Stuart LC (1949).
Reproduction R. hannsteini is oviparous.
Taxonomy The species Rhadinella hannsteini was originally described as Trimetopon hannsteini, a species new to science, by American herpetologist Laurence Cooper Stuart in 1949. In 1974 American herpetologist Charles William Myers assigned the species to the genus Rhadinaea as Rhadinea hannsteini. In 2011 Myers reassigned the species to the genus Rhadinella as Rhadinella hannsteini.
References
Further reading Heimes P (2016). Snakes of Mexico: Herpetofauna Mexicana Vol. I. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Chimaira. 572 pp. . Myers CW (1974). "The Systematics of Rhadinaea (Colubridae), a Genus of New World Snakes". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 153 (1): 1–262. (Rhadinaea hannsteini, new combination, p. 130). Myers CW (2011). "A New Genus and New Tribe for Enicognathus melanauchen Jan, 1863, a Neglected South American Snake (Colubridae: Xenodontinae), with Taxonomic Notes on Some Dipsadinae". American Museum Novitates (3715): 1–33. (Rhadinella hannsteini, new combination). Stuart LC (1949). "A New Trimetopon (Ophidia) from Guatemala". Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 62: 165–168. (Trimetopon hannsteini, new species).