Konrad Mebert

State University of Santa Cruz · Departamento de Ciências Biológicas (DCB)

The recent elevation of the Western Grass Snake, Natrix helvetica, from subspecies status prompted an assessment of its natural history and ecological traits compared to closely related species. We report an unusual predation attempt by the freshwater crab Potamon fluviatile on N. helvetica sicula from Sicily, indicating an ecological interaction p...

The Western Palearctic harbours a diverse snake fauna, including numerous endemic species and yet unnamed clades, identified through molecular analyses. However, morphological characteristics of these clades, even of common species, often remain relatively unexplored. In this study, we provide an examination of the morphology and cranial anatomy of...

Despite decades of molecular research, phylogenetic relationships in Palearctic vipers (genus Vipera) still essentially rely on a few loci, such as mitochondrial barcoding genes. Here we examined the diversity and evolution of Vipera with ddRAD-seq data from 33 representative species and subspecies. Phylogenomic analyses of ∼ 1.1 Mb recovered nine...

Influenced by rapid changes in climate and landscape features since the Miocene, widely distributed species provide suitable models to study the environmental impact on their evolution and current genetic diversity. The dice snake Natrix tessellata, widely distributed in the Western Palearctic is one such species. We aimed to resolve a detailed phy...

The thermal tolerance of ectotherms is a critical factor that influences their distribution, physiology, behaviour, and, ultimately, survival. Understanding the factors that shape thermal tolerance in these organisms is, therefore, of great importance for predicting their responses to forecasted climate warming. Here, we investigated the voluntary...

Melanism in V. dinniki has been known from the western, Russian part of the Greater Caucasus. For the central part of the large mountain ranges, melanism was only mentioned once, but never vouchered. We show the first melanistic V. dinniki from the Georgian section of the Greater Caucasus.

We describe the unusual case of erythrism in the Eastern Grass Snake, Natrix natrix. This colour morph is very rare and has not been reported in the literature before. Despite having observed thousands of N. natrix in the field, we personally detected this morph in only three individuals originating from Slovakia, Romania, and mainland Greece, whil...

This is the first multiple months study on home range and habitat use by a small group of bushmaster (Lachesis spp.). Five snakes (natives and translocated) were intensively radio tracked in a mosaic of plantations and small fragments of Atlantic Forest in the Reserva Ecologica Michelin in Bahia, Brazil. The average home range was 9.47 ha (MCP 95%)...

There is a guild of three phenotypically similar dwarf vipers of steppes and grassland from Western Asia (Turkiye, Transcaucasus, Iran), all with a threat status assessed by IUCN 2009: Vipera anatolica (CR), V. renardi eriwanensis (VU) and V. darevskii (CR). As their distribution and ecology is little known, and even their systematics stands with m...

Bol. Asoc. Herpetol. Esp. (2021) 32(2):45-53. /// Natrix astreptophora and Natrix maura are known to sympatric over a wide area from southern France to almost the entire Iberian Peninsula, and from Tunisia to Morocco in North Africa. However, hybridization between these watersnakes is virtually unkown, possibly a consequence of their relatively gre...

Substantial molecular and morphological character differences lead us to the description of a new species of the genus Pristimantis from the cloud forest of Cerro Chucantí, Maje Mountains, Darien Province, as well as from several other mountain ranges in eastern and central Panama. Pristimantis gretathunbergae sp. nov. is a sister species to the al...

The description of Vipera walser from the Northern Italian Alps as a new species (Ghielmi et al., 2016, Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research, 54, 161) was one of the most unexpected surprises of European herpetology in the 21st century. In mitochondrial (mt) DNA, it is closely related to a group of vipers only present in the...

A herpetological survey in the Syrian coastal region revealed more than 25 specimens of mountain vipers, genus Montivipera. Environmentally surprising are new records elow 600 m elevation on both sides (west and east) of the Syrian coastal mountain range. Morphological characters of size and colour pattern corroborate previous genetic results that...

The secretive behavior and life history of snakes makes studying their biology, distribution, and the epidemiology of venomous snakebite challenging. One of the most useful, most versatile, and easiest to collect types of biological data are photographs, particularly those that are connected with geographic location and date-time metadata. Photos v...

a small counseling contribution to this anecdote (only excerpt), written by Andrew Burton, on Hannibal's idea to use 100s to 1000s of snakes to scare of an enemy fleet. My input relates to the explanation of the feasibility of such a task, possible with dense coastal populations of Dice Snakes (Natrix tessellata) that likely existed in the Sea or M...

We describe a new species of snail-eating snake from two localities within the Atlantic Forest of the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais, Brazil. The new species differs remarkably from all congeners by its dorsal pattern consisting of sharply bordered triangles resembling the pattern of sympatric pitvipers, more precisely Bothrops jararaca and B. pi...

Turkey harbors a high diversity of viperid snakes, many with a high threat level on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, yet perception about even basic topics, such as distributions and conservation statuses, remain poor. We initiated a multi-year project 7 y ago to compensate these shortcomings and present herein dr...

We list most relevant locality data and voucher images of central-eastern Anatolian Mountain Viper taxa (Montivipera wagneri, M. b. bulgardaghica, M. b. albizona, and M. xanthina). For M. xanthina, we treat only its far southeastern range next to other mountain viper taxa. The list includes our hitherto unpublished records, previously published rec...

The Mangshan Pitviper (Protobothrops mangshanensis Zhao, 1990) is endemic to a small region in southern China along the border between Hunan and Guangdong provinces. It is the largest viper in Southeast Asia and possibly the most astoundingly colored one with its extreme resemblance to moss and lichen. Their impressive size to around 2 m total leng...

Cerro Chucantí in the Darién province is the highest peak in the Majé Mountains, an isolated massif in Eastern Panama. In addition to common herpetological species such as the Terraranas, Pristimantis cruentus, and P. caryophyllaceus, rare species such as Pristimantis moro and Strabomantis bufoniformis occur as well. Recent expeditions to Cerro Chu...

Supplemental Information

Turkey harbors a high diversity of viperid snakes, many with a high threat level on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, yet perception about even basic topics, such as distributions and conservation statuses, remain poor. We initiated a multi-year project 7 y ago to compensate these shortcomings and present herein dr...

The designation of taxonomic units has important implications for the understanding and conservation of biodiversity. Eurasian vipers are a monophyletic group of viperid snakes (Serpentes, Viperinae), currently comprising four genera (Daboia, Macrovipera, Montivipera and Vipera) and up to 40 species. Taxonomic units have been described using a wide...

If there was something written to my destiny: "Biology / Zoology is not a profession for me, it is my lifestyle. My feelings, approaches, and reactions are coming out of this lifestyle. If you want to learn something, experience it! If you take nature as an example, there is no chance of making a mistake! That is the right way!"-Prof. Dr. Bayram GÖ...

At a local scale, the timing of periodic life-history events of ectothermic vertebrates is strongly influenced by the ambient temperature. in the mountains, temperature decreases with increasing elevation. This is why the onset of spring activity of vipers can be expected to vary regionally between warm lowland and cold montane climates. To analyze...

Based on morphological characteristics, two subspecies of the Transcaucasian rat snake (Zamenis hohenackeri) are currently recognized, namely Z. h. tauricus and Z. h. hohenackeri. Both subspecies are repeatedly considered to be conspecific colour morphs, or have even been confused with Z. situla. Although, few studies involved the Transcaucasian ra...

A molecular phylogeny of the Neotropical snail-eating snakes (tribe Dipsadini) is presented including 43 (24 for the first time) of the 77 species, sampled for both nuclear and mitochondrial genes. Morphological and phylogenetic support was found for four new species of Dipsas and one of Sibon , which are described here based on their unique combin...

The medium-sized vipers of the genus Vipera are mainly parapatric in Europe and only a few contact zones (syntopies) are known between two species. The partial syntopy of three viper species (V. ammodytes, V. aspis, and V. berus) is exceptional and has become known only from two neighbouring valleys in the southern Julian Pre-Alps along the Italian...

We report on a second population of the recently described Vipera anatolica senliki from Mühür Dağ, Geyik Mountains in eastern Antalya Province, Turkey. The new population is located 10 km farther southeast on Barçın Dağ, yet the two populations are separated by interjacent mountains. We briefly compare both populations morphologically, as well as...

We investigated the characteristics of a small smooth snake population in central Germany after it experienced a rapid loss of habitat between 1955 and 1990. We hypothesised that local smooth snakes might demonstrate abnormalities in population characteristics such as age of maturity, growth rates, sex-ratio, reproduction, movement behaviour or in...

We report on a new population of Vipera anatolica from the Geyik Mountain Range in eastern Antalya Province, Turkey. It represents only the second known location, and is situated in a valley about 200 km east from the terra typica at Kohu Dağ in western Antalya Province. We compare both populations and, based on marked differences in morphology, ha...

As discussed at the 4BOV meeting in Athens, 2014, the information displayed in “The IUCN-Red List of Threatened Species” for Anatolian vipers goes back to assessments made in 2008 with three taxa classified as CRITICALLY ENDANGERED: 1) Vipera darevskii, 2) Montivipera wagneri, 3) V. anatolica; two as ENDANGERED: 4) M. (bulgardaghica) albizona, 5) V...

We present a molecular phylogeny of snake genus Atractus, with an improved taxon sampling that includes 30 of the 140 species currently recognized. The phylogenetic tree supports the existence of at least three new species in the Pacific lowlands and adjacent Andean slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes, which we describe here. A unique combination of mol...

We describe a new species of Tantilla from Cerro Chucantí, Serranía de Majé, Provincia de Darién, Panama. We allocate this species to the reticulata section of the taeniata group and consider it most closely related to Tantilla reticulata, from which it can be distinguished by color pattern, pholidosis, and hemipenial morphology

We have applied an integrative taxonomic approach, including bioacoustics, ecology, morphology, and molecular genetics (barcoding and phylogeography), to explore species richness in the genus Diasporus in eastern Panama, from where only Diasporus quidditus (Lynch, 2001) was previously known. During fieldwork in eastern Panama in 2011 and 2012 we fo...

Information about the snake diversity and their natural history from the Atlantic forest domain in Brazil refer mostly to inland forests than to coastal region. Within the state of Bahia, this knowledge is concentrated to the southeastern coastal stretch. Herein we report on the diversity of snakes from the restinga, ombrophilous forest and anthrop...

The Dice Snake (Natrix tessellata) is is a semi-aquatic snake, widely distributed along wetlands in Hungary (see Herpetological Atlas of Hungary in Puky et al. 2005). The Dice Snake inhabits a great variation of lentic to lotic wetlands and functions as a relevant element of healthy ecosystems (Mebert 2011). It is a top predator on fish and an exce...

Snake venoms contain a variety of biologically active proteins, which have therapeutic potential. Montivipera wagneri is an endemic mountain viper species of Turkey. In this study, the cytotoxic activity of M. wagneri crude venom was investigated against A549, HeLa, CaCo-2, U-87MG, PC3 and MCF-7 cancerous cells and non-cancerous cells Vero and HEK2...

New data on the distribution of the Transcaucasian Nose-horned Viper (Vipera ammodytes transcaucasiana) from Anatolia are presented, based on fieldwork carried out in June 2015. Two new localities from Çankırı and Sivas provinces were recorded along with a few ecological data. The species' range was extended to more southern parts of Anatolia, espe...

Northeast Anatolia is a global hotspot for vipers with at least 10 different species within a 200 km radius, thus rivalling the diversity of most tropical sites in this animal group. It harbors three viper species among the top 30 priority vipers in the world, requiering special effort to explore and conserve them.

Giant anoles of the genus Dactyloa have been considered to be represented in eastern Panama by six species. In this con-tribution, we describe a seventh species that is restricted to the Majé, San Blas, Darién, and Piedras-Pacora mountain rang-es. The new species resembles D. ibanezi, D. limon, and D. purpurescens in external morphology but differs...

North-eastern Anatolia harbours a high diversity of viperid snakes with only a limited knowledge about their distribution and with relationships among these vipers not yet fully resolved. Moreover, information on habitat attributes for most of these vipers is scarce. We initiated a multi-year project to improve our knowledge on their distribution a...

Based on morphological and molecular data, we describe three new species of the genus Lepidoblepharis with granular dorsals from Panama (Lepidoblepharis emberawoundule sp. nov., Lepidoblepharis rufigularis sp. nov., and Lepidoblepharis victormartinezi sp. nov.). The results of our molecular analyses confirm the existence of five deeply differentiat...

1) Supplementary material Table S1: Mitochondrial diversity for the three species 2) Supplementary material: Table S2: Microsatellite diversity and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium 3) Supplementary material: Figure S1: Results of the Structure analyses

Contact zones of closely related and ecologically similar species constitute rare opportunities to study the evolutionary consequences of past speciation processes. They represent natural laboratories in which strong competition could lead to the exclusion of one species, or the various species may switch into distinct ecological niches. Alternativ...

North-eastern Anatolia harbours a high diversity of viperid snakes with only a limited knowledge about their distribution and with relationships among these vipers not yet fully resolved. Moreover, information on habitat attributes for most of these vipers is scarce. We initiated a multi-year project to improve our knowledge on their distribution a...

The presence of intraspecific color polymorphism can have multiple impacts on the ecology of a species; as a consequence, particular color morphs may be strongly selected for in a given habitat type. For example, the asp viper (Vipera aspis) shows a high level of color polymorphism. A blotched morph (cryptic) is common throughout its range (central...

(in German) Die Würfelnatter Natrix tessellata (Laurenti) 1768 gehört zusammen mit der Ringelnatter Natrix natrix (L.), und der Vipernatter Natrix maura (L.) zur Gattung Natrix. Neben der Nominatrasse wird heute nur eine einzige Unterart der Würfelnatter anerkannt, die Natrix tessellata heinrothi (Hecht) 1930, die von der Insel Serpilor vor der Don...