A peculiar bamboo viper from Ping Chau, Mirs Bay: What is it?
At the time of my original report on Dung Ping Chau (Porcupine! 11:17, 1994), no voucher specimen of a viper, Trimeresurus, had been collected on that island. On 24 January 1999, Dr. Wenhua Lu and I poked through discarded junk in the woods at Tai Tong, Dung Ping Chau, and found a small female Trimeresurus, now Museum of Comparative Zoology field number 10172. In life she was brilliant green with faintly grayer transverse bands and a brick-red tail top, as is typical of the common local bamboo viper, T. albolabris. However, this individual had a white stripe under the eye, light green supralabials, and a green belly: minor deviations from the norm of yellow in these places. Each first dorsal scale was white on the upper two thirds, producing a bold, white, lateral stripe - typical of male T. albolabris, but not females.
Most striking, however, were the lower thirds of each first dorsal scale; these were brilliant carmine to blood red. The result produced a series of triangular spots along the venter that approached a red stripe - typical of male Trimeresurus stejnegeri, the bamboo viper of upland, inland South China (for example, at Dinghushan). Below the red, color shaded through purple on the ventral scale edges to sooty gray. All this is much more flamboyant than in any known female bamboo viper, especially T. albolabris.
The several species of Asian green "bamboo" vipers differ from each other principally in details of color and pattern, and, quite impressively, in the hemipenes - intromittent organs of males. The status of the Dung Ping Chau viper must await collection of more specimens, especially males. Could this be yet another new species for Hong Kong?
While I emphatically discourage amateur naturalists from catching vipers, some old pros might take on the job. Dung Ping Chau is a great place to visit: the scenery and fung shui woods are gorgeous, and the beach and waters are clean!
JAMES (SKIP) LAZELL
The Conservation AgencyP.20
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