A new species of indigo snake from north-western Venezuela (Serpentes: Colubridae: Drymarchon)

We describe a new species of snake of the genus Drymarchon from Falcon State, north-western Venezuela. The distinctive nature of this species, compared to the two other South American mainland taxa of Drymarchon, is supported by principal components analysis of scalation and colour pattern characters. The taxa corais and melanurus, hitherto considered conspecific, are found to be highly distinct, but homogeneous throughout their considerable ranges; consequently, we consider melanurus to be a full species, separate from Drymarchon corais.