CDS (II) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 115 of 120

Correct — B, Arunachal Pradesh. The snake is Trimeresurus arunachalensis, the Arunachal pitviper, found during biodiversity surveys at Ramda village in West Kameng district and formally described in March 2019 in the Russian Journal of Herpetology by a team of Captain, Deepak, Pandit, Bhatt and Athreya. The species name is taken straight from the state, which is what the stem is pointing at. The find mattered beyond the naming: no new green pit viper had been described from India for roughly seventy years before it, and the species is still known from a single specimen, which makes it one of the rarest pit vipers on record anywhere. The other options can be set aside because the epithet arunachalensis leaves no room for a state whose name it does not carry.

• (a)Kerala — Kerala's Western Ghats forests are extraordinarily rich in pit vipers and produce new reptile descriptions regularly, but this 2019 species carries the name arunachalensis.
• (c)Andaman and Nicobar Islands — An island group with high reptile endemism, and not a state in any case. The 2019 pit viper came from the Eastern Himalaya.
• (d)Assam — The neighbouring state, and a reasonable guess for a north-eastern find, but the type locality is Ramda in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh.

Pit vipers are venomous snakes that carry a heat-sensing pit between the eye and the nostril, which lets them detect warm-blooded prey in the dark. The green pit vipers of the genus Trimeresurus are forest snakes of South and South-East Asia, and the Eastern Himalaya — Arunachal Pradesh above all — is one of the least surveyed parts of their range. That is why a genuinely new species could still be described there in 2019, and why naming a species after the state it was found in is a common way of recording a type locality.

The question can be answered without having read the news, provided a candidate knows how scientific names work. A species named after the state it was found in will carry that state's name in its epithet, and arunachalensis points only one way. The wider point worth taking from this item is that Arunachal Pradesh is a live frontier of Indian biodiversity work — it lies in the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot, holds forest at every elevation from the plains to the alpine, and repeatedly yields species new to science. The Arunachal pitviper is also a caution about rarity: a species described from one animal tells us almost nothing about its population, and the describers themselves expected more individuals to be present in the forest.

• Trimeresurus arunachalensis, the Arunachal pitviper, was described in March 2019 and named after Arunachal Pradesh.
• It was found at Ramda village in West Kameng district during biodiversity surveys, and described in the Russian Journal of Herpetology.
• No new green pit viper had been described from India for about seventy years before it.
• The species is known from a single specimen, making it one of the rarest recorded pit vipers in the world.
• Pit vipers are named for the heat-sensing pit between the eye and the nostril, which detects warm-blooded prey.

• Guessing Kerala because the Western Ghats dominate Indian reptile news; read the species epithet instead.
• Treating the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a state — they are a Union Territory.
• Assuming a species described from one specimen is well understood; almost nothing is known of this snake's range or numbers.

As a recent-discovery item that identifies a place from a species name, or inside a statements set on India's biodiversity hotspots.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Pit vipers are so named because of

  • (a)Their habit of resting in ground pits
  • (b)A heat-sensing pit between the eye and the nostril
  • (c)Pitted scales along the back
  • (d)A pit-shaped marking on the hood

  Answer(b) A heat-sensing pit between the eye and the nostril, which detects warm-blooded prey in darkness.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Arunachal Pradesh falls within which of the world's biodiversity hotspots?

  • (a)The Western Ghats and Sri Lanka hotspot
  • (b)The Sundaland hotspot
  • (c)The Himalaya hotspot
  • (d)The Mediterranean Basin hotspot

  Answer(c) The Himalaya hotspot — its eastern section, which is among the least surveyed parts of India.