''Boaedon olivaceus'' is a species of snake in the family

Lamprophiidae The Lamprophiidae are a family of snakes found throughout much of Africa, including the Seychelles. There are 89 species as of July 2022. Biology Lamprophiids are a very diverse group of snakes. Many are terrestrial but some are fossorial (e.g. ...

. The species is endemic to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

Taxonomic history

Eli Greenbaum and colleagues described the taxonomy of this species as being "relatively stable for over a century".

Auguste Duméril Auguste Henri André Duméril (30 November 1812 – 12 November 1870) was a French zoologist. His father, André Marie Constant Duméril (1774-1860), was also a zoologist. In 1869 he was elected as a member of the Académie des sciences. Duméril ...

described this species in 1856, making it the type species of his newly-

circumscribed In geometry, the circumscribed circle or circumcircle of a polygon is a circle that passes through all the vertices of the polygon. The center of this circle is called the circumcenter and its radius is called the circumradius. Not every polyg ...

genus ''Holuropholis''. Charles Eugène Aubry-Lecomte collected the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

. The

junior synonym The Botanical and Zoological Codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. * In botanical nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that applies to a taxon that (now) goes by a different scientific name. For example, Linna ...

''Boodon poensis'' was described by

Albert Günther Albert Karl Ludwig Gotthilf Günther FRS, also Albert Charles Lewis Gotthilf Günther (3 October 1830 – 1 February 1914), was a German-born British zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. Günther is ranked the second-most productive re ...

in 1888,.

George Albert Boulenger George Albert Boulenger (19 October 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a Belgian-British zoologist who described and gave scientific names to over 2,000 new animal species, chiefly fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Boulenger was also an active botani ...

synonymized the two species, classifying it in the genus ''Boodon''.

Arthur Loveridge Arthur Loveridge (28 May 1891 – 16 February 1980) was a British biologist and herpetologist who wrote about animals in East Africa, particularly Tanzania, and New Guinea. He gave scientific names to several gecko species in the region. Arthur ...

classified it in the genus ''

Boaedon ''Boaedon'' is a genus of African lamprophiids consisting of the "brown" house snakes. The genus was originally described by Duméril but the species contained were reclassified as Lamprophis by Fitzinger in 1843, this taxonomy remained widely ...

'' in 1957. In 1974, M. C. Stucki-Stirn described a

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

''B. olivaceus stirnensis'', but it was synonymized with the species itself in 2014.

Distribution

The type locality of this species is

Gabon Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north ...

, and the type locality of its

''B. poensis'' is

Bioko Bioko (; historically Fernando Po; bvb, Ëtulá Ëria) is an island off the west coast of Africa and the northernmost part of Equatorial Guinea. Its population was 335,048 at the 2015 census and it covers an area of . The island is located of ...

. It is found in

Central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

and

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...

and

East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa: Due to the historical ...

. Countries it has been recorded in include: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Gabon, Guinea, and Togo. It is found in and near rainforests.

Description

Its total length is . It has small eyes, which can be orange, red, or reddish-brown. Its dorsum is glossy and colored dark gray or a dark, greyish-brown.

References

External links

* Snakes of Africa Taxa named by Auguste Duméril Reptiles described in 1856 Colubrids {{colubrid-stub