Description
Enregistrements de données
Les données de cette ressource occurrence ont été publiées sous forme d'une Archive Darwin Core (Darwin Core Archive ou DwC-A), le format standard pour partager des données de biodiversité en tant qu'ensemble d'un ou plusieurs tableurs de données. Le tableur de données du cœur de standard (core) contient 153 enregistrements.
Cet IPT archive les données et sert donc de dépôt de données. Les données et métadonnées de la ressource sont disponibles pour téléchargement dans la section téléchargements. Le tableau des versions liste les autres versions de chaque ressource rendues disponibles de façon publique et permet de tracer les modifications apportées à la ressource au fil du temps.
Versions
Le tableau ci-dessous n'affiche que les versions publiées de la ressource accessibles publiquement.
Comment citer
Les chercheurs doivent citer cette ressource comme suit:
Bouam, I., Chedad, A., Sadine, S. E., 2024. Swimming in the Sahara: a new locality record and range extension of Natrix maura (Linnaeus, 1758) (Squamata, Colubridae) from central Algeria. Museu de Ciències Naturals. Occurrence/dataset: https://doi.org/10.15470/fe3689
Droits
Les chercheurs doivent respecter la déclaration de droits suivante:
L’éditeur et détenteur des droits de cette ressource est Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona. Ce travail est sous licence Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0.
Enregistrement GBIF
Cette ressource a été enregistrée sur le portail GBIF, et possède l'UUID GBIF suivante : 6de0687a-c1e9-47e6-97ae-a1d15fe71c4f. Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona publie cette ressource, et est enregistré dans le GBIF comme éditeur de données avec l'approbation du GBIF Spain.
Mots-clé
Occurrences; Herpetofauna; Viperine snake; Bilineata; North Africa; Wallacean shortfall; Observation
Contacts
- Fournisseur Des Métadonnées ●
- Créateur ●
- Personne De Contact
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4394-9297
- Fournisseur Des Métadonnées ●
- Créateur ●
- Personne De Contact
- Fournisseur Des Métadonnées ●
- Créateur ●
- Personne De Contact
- Utilisateur
Couverture géographique
Field observations were conducted at Sebkhet El Melah wetland (30° 28' 06" N, 2° 55' 35" E; 370 m a.s.l.; fig. 1A), El Menia Province (formerly El Goléa), central Algeria. This shallow, saline lake covers about 8 km² and is bordered by sand dunes and rocky hills. It receives water from surrounding palm grove drainage, El Menia city domestic wastewater, and rainfall (Hacěne et al., 2004; Alioua et al., 2016). Designated as a Ramsar Site (https://rsis.ramsar.org/ris/1429), Sebkhet El Melah is a critical habitat for Saharan biodiversity, particularly waterbirds (Bouzid et al., 2009, 2019, 2023; Chedad et al., 2021). Based on data from the WorldClim database with a resolution of ~1 km² (Fick and Hijmans, 2017), the site falls within the inferior Saharan bioclimatic zone, characterized by temperate winters and a mean annual precipitation of 30 mm.
| Enveloppe géographique | Sud Ouest [30,12, 0,07], Nord Est [36,93, 8,49] |
|---|
Couverture taxonomique
Pas de description disponible
| Phylum | Chordata |
|---|---|
| Class | Reptilia |
| Order | Squamata |
| Family | Colubridae |
| Genus | Natrix |
| Species | Natrix maura |
Données sur le projet
Algeria ranks among the most species-rich countries in the Mediterranean Basin and North Africa in terms of terrestrial reptiles, with 101 documented species (Rouag et al., 2024). However, knowledge of the distribution of many reptile taxa remains incomplete due to a scarcity of comprehensive herpetofaunal inventories across many parts of the country (Beddek, 2017; Beddek et al., 2018). Much of the available distributional data relies on historical sources, primarily museum specimens and 19th and early 20th-century literature (e.g., Gervais, 1836; Guichenot, 1850; Strauch, 1862; Lallemant, 1867; Boulenger, 1891; Olivier, 1894; Doumergue, 1901), which often suffer from spatial inaccuracies. This knowledge gap, referred to as the “Wallacean shortfall”, is particularly pronounced in the Algerian Sahara, due in part to the inaccessibility of remote regions, resulting in many reptilian taxa having poorly defined and documented range maps (Bouam et al., 2022; Chedad et al., 2024). Although the past decade has witne sed a resurgence of scientific interest in Algeria’s reptile fauna, resulting in the discovery of previously unreported taxa and significant range extensions for known species across diverse taxonomic groups, including Testudinidae (Boulaouad et al., 2023), Gekkonidae (Mouane et al., 2021), Scincidae (Rouag et al., 2016), Agamidae (Saoudi et al., 2017; El Bouhissi et al., 2022), Lamprophiidae (Bakhouche and Escoriza, 2017; Bakhouche et al., 2019; Böhme et al., 2019), and Viperidae (Bouam et al., 2019). Natrix Laurenti, 1768 is a Palearctic genus of colubrid snakes, currently comprising five recognized species (Uetz et al., 2023). Among these, the semiaquatic Natrix maura (Linnaeus, 1758) exhibits a West Mediterranean chorotype. It is widespread across the Maghreb and Western Europe, extending from the Iberian Peninsula to northwestern Italy, including France and southwestern Switzerland (Mateo Miras et al., 2009). N. maura occurs at elevations ranging from sea level up to 2600 m asl and is commonly encountered in various freshwater habitats, but also tolerates waters with relatively high salt concentrations (Fuentes and Escoriza, 2015; Geniez, 2015). It predominantly preys on fish and amphibians (Rugiero et al., 2000; Santos et al., 2000). This species is a small to medium-sized snake, typically measuring 40–80 cm in total length, though some individuals reach up to 95 cm (Geniez, 2015; Trape, 2023). Notably, this colubrid species exhibits remarkable Batesian mimicry, both morphologically and behaviourally, of European vipers of the genus Vipera (Santos et al., 2018), hence its common name, the viperine snake.
| Titre | Swimming in the Sahara: A new locality record and range extension of Natrix maura (Linnaeus, 1758) (Squamata, Colubridae), from central Algeria |
|---|---|
| Description du domaine d'étude / de recherche | Field observations were conducted at Sebkhet El Melah wetland (30° 28' 06" N, 2° 55' 35" E; 370 m a.s.l.; fig. 1A), El Menia Province (formerly El Goléa), central Algeria. This shallow, saline lake covers about 8 km² and is bordered by sand dunes and rocky hills. It receives water from surrounding palm grove drainage, El Menia city domestic wastewater, and rainfall (Hacěne et al., 2004; Alioua et al., 2016). Designated as a Ramsar Site (https://rsis.ramsar.org/ris/1429), Sebkhet El Melah is a critical habitat for Saharan biodiversity, particularly waterbirds (Bouzid et al., 2009, 2019, 2023; Chedad et al., 2021). Based on data from the WorldClim database with a resolution of ~1 km² (Fick and Hijmans, 2017), the site falls within the inferior Saharan bioclimatic zone, characterized by temperate winters and a mean annual precipitation of 30 mm. |
| Description du design | To comprehensively update N. maura distribution in Algeria, we conducted a thorough literature review and searched online museum and institutional collections for occurrence records. Additionally, occurrence data were obtained from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, 2024) and iNaturalist (https://inaturalist.org). Following Chowdhury et al. (2024), data were also sourced from Facebook (https://facebook.com), specifically from the group named “world of wildlife in Algeria - عالم الحياة البرية في الجزائر” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1641684429224291/). The species identification of data obtained from both iNaturalist and Facebook was double-checked and confirmed by the authors. To ensure data accuracy, all records included precise locality description and/or GPS coordinates with a minimum precision of two decimal degrees, while excluding records with coordinates referring to the centroids of large geographic areas. Duplicate records from the same locality were merged into single entries. The final dataset comprised 139 unique presence locations (annex 1) visualized using ArcGIS v. 10.8. |
Les personnes impliquées dans le projet:
Méthodes d'échantillonnage
To comprehensively update N. maura distribution in Algeria, we conducted a thorough literature review and searched online museum and institutional collections for occurrence records.
| Etendue de l'étude | Field observations were conducted at Sebkhet El Melah wetland (30° 28' 06" N, 2° 55' 35" E; 370 m a.s.l.; fig. 1A), El Menia Province (formerly El Goléa), central Algeria. This shallow, saline lake covers about 8 km² and is bordered by sand dunes and rocky hills. It receives water from surrounding palm grove drainage, El Menia city domestic wastewater, and rainfall (Hacěne et al., 2004; Alioua et al., 2016). Designated as a Ramsar Site (https://rsis.ramsar.org/ris/1429), Sebkhet El Melah is a critical habitat for Saharan biodiversity, particularly waterbirds (Bouzid et al., 2009, 2019, 2023; Chedad et al., 2021). Based on data from the WorldClim database with a resolution of ~1 km² (Fick and Hijmans, 2017), the site falls within the inferior Saharan bioclimatic zone, characterized by temperate winters and a mean annual precipitation of 30 mm. |
|---|---|
| Contrôle qualité | Additionally, occurrence data were obtained from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, 2024) and iNaturalist (https://inaturalist.org). Following Chowdhury et al. (2024), data were also sourced from Facebook (https://facebook.com), specifically from the group named “world of wildlife in Algeria (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1641684429224291/). |
Description des étapes de la méthode:
- The species identification of data obtained from both iNaturalist and Facebook was double-checked and confirmed by the authors. To ensure data accuracy, all records included precise locality description and/or GPS coordinates with a minimum precision of two decimal degrees, while excluding records with coordinates referring to the centroids of large geographic areas. Duplicate records from the same locality were merged into single entries. The final dataset comprised 139 unique presence locations (annex 1) visualized using ArcGIS v. 10.8.
Citations bibliographiques
- Bouam, I., Chedad, A., Sadine, S. E., 2024. Swimming in the Sahara: a new locality record and range extension of Natrix maura (Linnaeus, 1758) (Squamata, Colubridae) from central Algeria. Arxius de Miscel·lània Zoològica, 22: 129-142. DOI: https://doi.org/10.32800/amz.2024.22.0129. https://doi.org/10.32800/amz.2024.22.0129
Métadonnées additionnelles
| Introduction | Algeria ranks among the most species-rich countries in the Mediterranean Basin and North Africa in terms of terrestrial reptiles, with 101 documented species (Rouag et al., 2024). However, knowledge of the distribution of many reptile taxa remains incomplete due to a scarcity of comprehensive herpetofaunal inventories across many parts of the country (Beddek, 2017; Beddek et al., 2018). Much of the available distributional data relies on historical sources, primarily museum specimens and 19th and early 20th-century literature (e.g., Gervais, 1836; Guichenot, 1850; Strauch, 1862; Lallemant, 1867; Boulenger, 1891; Olivier, 1894; Doumergue, 1901), which often suffer from spatial inaccuracies. This knowledge gap, referred to as the “Wallacean shortfall”, is particularly pronounced in the Algerian Sahara, due in part to the inaccessibility of remote regions, resulting in many reptilian taxa having poorly defined and documented range maps (Bouam et al., 2022; Chedad et al., 2024). Although the past decade has witnessed a resurgence of scientific interest in Algeria’s reptile fauna, resulting in the discovery of previously unreported taxa and significant range extensions for known species across diverse taxonomic groups, including Testudinidae (Boulaouad et al., 2023), Gekkonidae (Mouane et al., 2021), Scincidae (Rouag et al., 2016), Agamidae (Saoudi et al., 2017; El Bouhissi et al., 2022), Lamprophiidae (Bakhouche and Escoriza, 2017; Bakhouche et al., 2019; Böhme et al., 2019), and Viperidae (Bouam et al., 2019). Natrix Laurenti, 1768 is a Palearctic genus of colubrid snakes, currently comprising five recognized species (Uetz et al., 2023). Among these, the semiaquatic Natrix maura (Linnaeus, 1758) exhibits a West Mediterranean chorotype. It is widespread across the Maghreb and Western Europe, extending from the Iberian Peninsula to northwestern Italy, including France and southwestern Switzerland (Mateo Miras et al., 2009). N. maura occurs at elevations ranging from sea level up to 2600 m asl and is commonly encountered in various freshwater habitats, but also tolerates waters with relatively high salt concentrations (Fuentes and Escoriza, 2015; Geniez, 2015). It predominantly preys on fish and amphibians (Rugiero et al., 2000; Santos et al., 2000). This species is a small to medium-sized snake, typically measuring 40–80 cm in total length, though some individuals reach up to 95 cm (Geniez, 2015; Trape, 2023). Notably, this colubrid species exhibits remarkable Batesian mimicry, both morphologically and behaviourally, of European vipers of the genus Vipera (Santos et al., 2018), hence its common name, the viperine snake. |
|---|---|
| Objet | We present a new locality record for N. maura in Algeria, significantly expanding its known geographic distribution. Additionally, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of N. maura distribution within the country, we compiled occurrence data from various sources and provide an updated distribution map for Algeria. |
| Identifiants alternatifs | 6de0687a-c1e9-47e6-97ae-a1d15fe71c4f |
| https://ipt.gbif.es/resource?r=viperine_snake_algeria |