Rough Earth Snake

Haldea striatula
(Linnaeus, 1766)
Franklin Co., Missouri. April 6. 1974.

My first Haldea came from a small cedar glade, and since then I’ve seen many more in that type of habitat. Lumped into the genus Virginia with the ‘smooth earth snake’ since the late nineteenth century, recent genetic analysis restored this species to the monotypic genus Haldea. For more info (and a glimpse at the relationships between various members of tribe Thamnophiini) see:

McVay, John David; Bryan Carstens 2013. Testing monophyly without well-supported gene trees: Evidence from multi-locus nuclear data conflicts with existing taxonomy in the snake tribe Thamnophiini. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Volume 68, Issue 3, September 2013, Pages 425–431.

My Flickr album for this species is here.

HerpMapper records for this species are here.

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