Our Observation of the Week is this Guatemala Neckband Snake (Scaphiodontophis annulatus), seen in Mexico by @perlachuc!

Last February, a few of Perla Chuc’s friends from Mexico City and Chiapas came to visit her in the Mexican state of Tabasco, near the Guatemalan border. “We planned a field trip to the municipality of Macuspana to try and photograph whatever we could find,” she says.

After walking for a while my companion Leo spotted something moving through the vegetation and saw the Scaphiodontophis annulatus snake. We just had the right time to photograph it, and I only had my cell phone, but I still took one photo. It’s a spectacular species, just too beautiful. It was a good day, my friends and I were satisfied and happy with this new personal record.

While Guatemalan neckband snakes do occur in Guatemala, they obviously range elsewhere and can be found from southern Mexico into Colombia, often in forest leaf litter. They prey mostly on ground skinks (Scincella sp.) as well as other lizards and sometimes frogs, but one was recently observed dining on a Tantilla moesta snake. 

A nature lover since she was a child, Perla (above, with her first salamander) is a biologist with a particular interest in amphibians and other herpetofauna. She’s hoping to study them further while going for a postgraduate degree.

As for iNat, she tells me she’s known about it for a few years

and I used it to confirm records and species distribution or occasional identifications, but I had no real interest in uploading photos. It wasn’t until some friends started using it that I was actually encouraged to do so as well. I created my account and started to upload all the photos I was able to capture from previous years. Yes I was late to iNat, but using the app is now part of my day. Most of all I like to review herpetofauna and see what is new in this group. I love seeing how people get interested in uploading photos, identifying them,  and knowing more about a particular species once they get an identification. This makes us care about the world around us and the living things we share the planet with.

(Perla’s answers were translated from Spanish by @aztekium_tutor and have been lightly edited for clarity. Photo of Perla by Leonardo Ponce.)

- Check out the pattern variability of Guatemalan Neckband Snakes on iNat! 

Posted on February 16, 2022 01:25 AM by tiwane