Journal of Threatened
Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 June 2026 | 18(6): 29150–29153
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.10510.18.6.29150-29153
#10510 | Received 05 March 2026 | Final received 06 May 2026| Finally
accepted 13 June 2026
Photographic record of the
Eastern Bronzeback Tree Snake Dendrelaphis
cf. proarchos (Wall, 1909) from Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, Uttar Pradesh, India
Vipin Kapoor Sainy
1 ,
Aqsa Jaseem 2 , Rohit Ravi 3 , Apoorva
Gupta 4 , H. Raja Mohan 5 ,
R. Jagadeesh 6 & Kirti Chaudhary
7
1,4,5,6 3/32, Dudhwa Hostel, Dudhwa
Headquarters, Dudhwa Tiger Reserve Division, Palia Kalan, Lakhimpur Kheri,
Uttar Pradesh 262902, India.
2 Department of Wildlife Sciences,
ITC-Building, Faculty of Life Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh,
Uttar Pradesh 202002, India.
3 3/29, WWF-India Field Office, Dudhwa Hostel, Dudhwa
Headquarters, Dudhwa Tiger Reserve Division, Palia Kalan, Lakhimpur Kheri,
Uttar Pradesh 262902, India.
7 North Kheri
Forest Division (Buffer Zone), Dudhwa Tiger Reserve,
Police Line, Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh 262701,
India.
1 vipkapoor12@gmail.com
(corresponding author), 2 aqsajaseem000@gmail.com, 3 rravi@wwfindia.net,
4 apoorvagupta.explorewild@gmail.com
5 rajamohan.hari@gmail.com, 6 jagadeeshrifs@gmail.com, 7
kirtic0704@gmail.com
Editor: S.R. Ganesh, Kalinga Foundation, Agumbe, India. Date
of publication: 26 June 2026 (online & print)
Citation: Sainy, V.K., A. Jaseem, R. Ravi,
A. Gupta, H.R. Mohan, R. Jagadeesh & K. Chaudhary (2026). Photographic
record of the Eastern Bronzeback Tree Snake Dendrelaphis cf. proarchos
(Wall, 1909) from Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, Uttar
Pradesh, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 18(6): 29150–29153. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.10510.18.6.29150-29153
Copyright: © Sainy et al. 2026. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use,
reproduction, and distribution of this article in any medium by providing
adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, Uttar Pradesh Forest Department, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgments: The author thanks the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve authorities and frontline forest staff for their support during field observations.
The Eastern Bronzeback
Tree Snake Dendrelaphis proarchos
(Wall, 1909), is a species of diurnal, arboreal, colubrid snake found in
northeastern India and adjacent regions of Indochina including Bangladesh,
Bhutan, China, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam (Vogel & van Rooijen
2011). In India, the species has been reliably reported from several
northeastern states, such as Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya,
Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, and West Bengal through museum and field records,
western and central India (e.g., Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh) (Vogel
& van Rooijen 2011; Biakzuala
et al. 2022; Sharma & Verma 2023; Parmar et al.
2024; Mohandas & Dnyaneshwar 2025). While most Indian records from the
northeastern India are in conformity with geographic range characterised
by the taxonomic revision which revalidated D. proarchos,
some outlier records from central and western India have been considered of
dubious, anthropogenic origin (Sharma & Verma
2023; Parmar et al. 2024; Mohandas & Dnyaneshwar 2025). A few reports of “D.
pictus”, an Indo-Malayan species (fide Vogel
& van Rooijen 2011) from Nepal (Kästle et al. 2013; Rai et al. 2022) remain unverified,
requiring confirmation of the presence of D. proarchos
in central Himalaya and Shivalik landscape. In this
study, we report a photographic record of Dendrelaphis
cf. proarchos from Dudhwa
Tiger Reserve, Uttar Pradesh, India.
The present record is a result of
sustained field efforts by the authors in Dudhwa
Tiger Reserve, wherein systematic biodiversity documentation across the reserve
since 2022, comprising approximately 400 field-days and more than 2,400
person-hours of structured surveys have been carried out. These surveys were
conducted across the core zone ranges of south Sonaripur,
Kakrah, Dudhwa, Sathiana, and the Kishanpur
Wildlife Sanctuary, using a combination of day and night transects, road-killed
monitoring along the Dudhwa–Gauriphanta
highway, camera trapping, and herpetological pitfall surveys. These efforts
have yielded documented records of over 350 vertebrate species, including 58
reptile species. Despite this sustained effort, no live or dead specimen of any
Dendrelaphis species had been encountered
prior to 10 July 2025, underscoring the genuine rarity of the present record.
The present observation was made during a routine patrol along Dudhwa–Gauriphanta forest road,
which passes through the interior of the core zone and is primarily used for
management and regulated vehicular movement.
On 10 July 2025, at 0930 h,
during a field visit, a fresh, mildly trampled road-killed snake about 1 m long
was observed on the Dudhwa–Gauriphanta
road near Bankati-Piprola junction (28.5728220 N,
80.5968190 E; 205 m) in Palia, within the
core area of Dudhwa Tiger Reserve (Image 1). The
snake was photographed and then identified as an adult Dendrelaphis
cf. proarchos (Wall, 1909) (Image 2). This
photographic observation was posted on the iNaturalist
citizen-science portal (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/334567974).
The mortality appeared accidental and was likely caused by vehicular impact, as
suggested by visible tyre marks on the road surface,
a common cause of snake mortality in forested landscapes (Kichloo
et al. 2022). Although the mid-body region of the snake was damaged, the head,
neck, and posterior portion remained intact, allowing reliable identification.
The specimen was photographed using a Canon EOS 200D Mark II camera with an
18–55 mm lens, and identification was confirmed using standard morphological
characters described in authoritative taxonomic literature (Vogel & van Rooijen 2011; Biakzuala et al.
2022; Parmar et al. 2024). Modern herpetological studies increasingly emphasise the importance of photographic or specimen-based
confirmation for validating species distribution records (Uetz
et al. 2023). However, we were unable to collect or deposit the specimen as a
voucher due to prevailing legal stipulations. But the present study documented
the photographic evidence of Dendrelaphis cf.
proarchos from Uttar Pradesh.
Identification of the Dudhwa specimen as Dendrelaphis
cf. proarchos was based on (Wall 1909;
Vogel & van Rooijen 2011, Biakzuala
et al. 2022): slender, elongated body with a head broader than neck, large eyes
with round pupils, dorsum bronze-brown with a thick black lateral stripe along
the body, bordered below by yellowish-white, and further below by a thin black
lateral stripe, smooth dorsal scales arranged obliquely, with enlarged
vertebral scales, black post-ocular stripe, venter pale yellowish to cream,
sometimes with ventrolateral light stripes bordered by darker lines, loreal 1,
preocular 1, postoculars 2, supralabials
8–9 (5th, 6th contacting eye). It is not D. biloreatus as it has a single loreal on each side, not D.
cyanochloris as it has thick black side stripes
throughout the trunk and not D. tristis as it
has lateral black side stripes (Biakzuala et al.
2022). The specimen does not depict any feature not diagnostic of D. proarchos. Ventral, subcaudal and dorsal row counts of
this specimen are needed for confirming identification and hence we
conservatively report it as D. cf. proarchos.
Distribution records of Dendrelaphis cf. proarchos
in India have been refined through successive faunal surveys and taxonomic
revisions (Wall 1909; Wallach et al. 2014). Within India, the species has been
reliably reported from several northeastern states, such as Arunachal Pradesh,
Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, and West Bengal through
museum, snake rescues and field records, from parts of western and central
India (e.g., Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh) (Vogel & van Rooijen 2011; Biakzuala et al.
2022; Sharma & Verma 2023; Parmar et al. 2024;
Mohandas & Dnyaneshwar 2025). While recent morphological and molecular
studies have confirmed the validity of Dendrelaphis
proarchos from northeast India (Mizoram) and
reassigned earlier northern Indian records of D. pictus
to D. proarchos (Vogel & van Rooijen 2011), the present record from Dudhwa
Tiger Reserve represents the first confirmed occurrence of this species from
the Terai landscape of Uttar Pradesh, significantly
extending its known distribution westwards by nearly 900 airline km, from the
nearest place Darjeeling. Previous studies from Uttar Pradesh, including Dudhwa, have only reported D. tristis
(Das et al. 2012; Boruah et al. 2020). This shows that similar species are
present in the region, but there has been no record of D. proarchos before this study.
Patterns of range expansion in
snakes are increasingly being recognised across
Indian subcontinent. For example, Ahaetulla
longirostris was described from Bihar and
Meghalaya (Mirza et al. 2024), but later records have indicated a range
extension, including reports from the Dudhwa Tiger
Reserve. Similarly, Trimeresurus salazar was originally described from the eastern
Himalayan region of Arunachal Pradesh, India (Mirza et al. 2020), but later
studies have reported it from more areas, such as central India, showing a
westward range extension (Vogel et al. 2022).
Similarly, Trimeresurus erythrurus, historically known from parts of
northeastern India and adjacent Indochina, has also witnessed range updates in
recent years, with new distributional records emerging from eastern peninsular
India (Deuti et al. 2021). Such examples highlight
that cryptic, arboreal, snakes often have wider range extensions than
previously documented, particularly in under surveyed regions. Therefore, the
present record of Dendrelaphis cf. proarchos from Dudhwa Tiger
Reserve may represent a similar pattern of natural distributional expansion
rather than an isolated or human-mediated occurrence (Parmar et al. 2024). As
the record originates from the core forest area of a Tiger Reserve, chances of
human-mediated introduction is very minimal, if not
nil. This record further highlights the underexplored reptile diversity of the Terai Arc Landscape (Das et al. 2012; Boruah et al. 2020;
Hakim & Ashar 2025) and underscore the
conservation value of Dudhwa Tiger Reserve for both
well-known and cryptic species.
For
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