Micrurus putumayensis, also known commonly as the Putumayo coral snake, cobra coral do Putumayo in Brazilian Portuguese, and coral putumayense in South American Spanish, is a species of venomous snake in the family Elapidae. The species is native to northwestern South America. www.reptile-database.org.
Description Unlike most New World coral snakes which are tricolored, Micrurus putumayensis is bicolored. Its color pattern consists of alternating rings of only black and yellow. There are no red rings present. Both the black rings and the yellow rings are very wide. The black rings are 8–35 dorsal scales and ventral scales wide, and the yellow rings are 4–11 dorsals and ventrals wide. The dorsal scales within the yellow rings are heavily marked with black. The black marking is at the base of each scale, with the tip and edges being yellow, which is the opposite of in other species of Micrurus. Males have 7–11 black rings on the body, and females have 9–14. Males have 2–3 black rings on the tail, and females have two.
Males have 197–208 ventrals and 47–51 subcaudals, and femaless have 216–226 ventrals and 32–35 caudals.
Medium-sized for the genus Micrurus, adults of M. putumayensis usually have a total length (tail included) of approximately . The maximum recorded total length is .
Geographic distribution Micrurus putumayensis is found in northwestern Brazil, southeastern Colombia, and northeastern Peru.
Habitat The preferred natural habitat of Micrurus putumayensis is forest in the northwestern Amazon basin, at elevations of .
Behavior Micrurus putumayensis is terrestrial and diurnal.
Diet Micrurus putumayensis preys on nonvenomous snakes of the family Colubridae. xii + 328 pp., 38 maps, 63 color photographs, 49 color pattern drawings. (Micrurus putumayensis, pp. 210–211, Figure 60 + Map 33).
Reproduction Micrurus putumayensis is oviparous.
Taxonomy This species was originally described in early 1962 as a species new to science by Venezuelan herpetologist Abdem R. Lancini. At that time he gave it the scientific name Micrurus schmidti. Unfortunately, that name was preoccupied by Micrurus schmidti . To resolve this conflict, Lancini published a second scientific paper, later in 1962, in which he coined the replacement name Micrurus putumayensis. Dunn's Micrurus schmidti is a synonym of Micrurus stewarti .
References
Further reading
xiv + 430 pp., 568 figures, 109 distribution maps, 31 tables. 189 pp. (Micrurus putumayensis, p.116). (Micrurus schmidti, new species). (in Spanish). (Micrurus putumayensis, replacement name for Micrurus schmidti ). (in Spanish). (in Portuguese, with an abstract in English).