Popeia inornata, a new species of pitviper from west Malaysia (Squamata: Viperidae: Crotalinae)

Abstract

We describe a new species of green pitviper from Southeast Asia. This species is a member of the genus Popeia (formerly known as the Trimeresurus popeiorum complex), and is distinguished from congeners by a combination of morphological and molecular characters. These include the absence of a red lateral stripe in adult males, low ventral scale counts and green eye coloration in males and females, and five fixed nucleotide differences in a 720 base pair fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. The new species is known only from the Cameron Highlands range in West Malaysia, where it was found between 1200 – 2000 m above sea level in or near undisturbed evergreen rainforest.