Ophiophagus Gunther 1864

Comparisons Early attempts to understand variation in the complex suffered from a variety of shortcomings, due to the variation within (Figs 11–12) and among populations (Figs 13–16) and scarcity of vouchered specimens, especially entire specimens of adults. For instance, all four species recognised here demonstrate dramatic ontogenetic colour and pattern changes, with the banded juveniles losing the pattern in adults consistently in one species (O. salvatana sp. nov.) and sometimes in another (O. bungarus comb. nov.), retaining it into adulthood in a third population (O. kaalinga sp. nov.), and developing dark edges to the band in the fourth (O. hannah). Further, the allopatric populations of the four species recognized in this paper do not show categorical differences in the counts of the major scales that have been traditionally employed for taxonomic differentiation of species within snakes. However, a number of characters are useful to unequivocally diagnose the four species recognized here. Character states useful for identification and diagnosis of the members of the complex include dorsal ground colour and pattern, nature of body bands in adults (unbanded and banded, the bands with or without a dark edge) and pterygoid tooth/tooth socket counts. Means, ranges and sample size of characters differentiating the four lineages identified in this study and supported by our mitochondrial phylogeny (see Gowri Shankar et al. 2021: 5) are shown in Table 1. Measurement data are in Table 2. Furthermore, we provide here a dichotomous identification key for the identification of the species of the genus Ophiophagus recognized here.