SREL Reprint #1983

Seminatrix pygaea (Black swamp snake) size

Charles A. Kean and Tracey D. Tuberville

Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, Drawer E, Aiken, South Carolina 29802, USA

Introduction: The record total length (SVL + tail length) for Seminatrix pygaea given in Conant and Collins (1991. Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 450 pp.) is 47.0 cm based on a specimen described by Palmer and Paul (1963. Herpetologica 19:219-221). Their specimen was a female with an incomplete tail, having only 18 subcaudals. The record size given for S. pygaea in Ernst and Barbour (1989. Snakes of Eastern North America. George Mason University Press, Fairfax, Virginia) was erroneously printed as 65.4 cm total length, but should have read 46.5 cm (Carl Ernst, pers. comm.).
Here we report a gravid female S. pygaea (SREL specimen #3422) with a total length of 55.5 cm (48.5 cm SVL + 9.0 cm tail; mass = 68.4 g), exceeding the previous record by 8.5 cm. The female's length through subcaudal 18 was 51.2 cm.

SREL Reprint #1983

Kean, C. and T.D. Tuberville. 1995. Seminatrix pygaea (Black swamp snake) size. Herpetological Review 26:103.

This information was provided by the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (srel.uga.edu).