The species status of the viviparous sea snakes

Abstract: Globally we have around 65 species of viviparous sea snakes recognized depending on the species concept used. The group is distributed in the Indian and Pacific Ocean; however, most species occur in the Indo-Malayan Archipelago, the China Sea, Indonesia and the Australian region. The viviparous sea snakes are not at all easy to identified to species level and the group include some taxonomic problematic species that need a more throughout morphological and molecular systematic investigation. At the moment the group is separated into two distinct clades: 1) The Aipysurus group, including only few recognized problematic species as Aipysurus pooleorum and the Emydocephalus-complex (including three accepted species for the moment) and 2) The Hydrophis group which have many more recognized problematic species as Hydrophis cyanocinctus/pacificus, H. curtus, H. fasciatus/atriceps, H. inornatus, H. melanosoma, H. torquatus, and H. vorisi just to mention the most obvious. The talk will be concentrated about some of the above mentioned taxonomic problematic species and how we can solve the problem in getting more morphological as well as molecular data gathered.