2 Materials and methods
The materials used in the present study were obtained from snake
specimens stored in ethanol 70% in the reptile collection of the Razi
University Zoological Museum (RUZM) and the Zoological Collection of
Reza Babaie Savasari (ZMRBS). 22 adult snake specimens from seven
species were investigated. The selected snakes included six viperid and
two colubrid species. These snakes are found in different regions and
inhabit more or less different habitats in the Middle East. The
Viperinae or old world vipers are a subfamily of venomous snakes endemic
to Europe, Asia,
and Africa. The Viperinae
genus PseudocerastesBoulenger,
1896, comprises three species; Pseudocerastes persicus (Duméril,
Bibron & Duméril, 1854), Pseudocerastes fieldi Schmidt, 1930 andPseudocerastes urarachnoides Bostanchi, Anderson, Kami &
Papenfuss, 2006. The specimens used in this study were collected from
Kerman Province, Iran for P. persicus , from southwestern Iraq forP. fieldi , and from Ilam province in western Iran for P.
urarachnoides . The monotypic genus Eristicophis , represented byE. macmahonii Alcock & Finn1897, was captured in Nushki
province, southwestern Pakistan. Genus Cerastes , represented byCerastes gasperettii Leviton & Anderson, 1967, was captured in
Khuzestan province, southwestern Iran, and al-Diwaniyah Governorate,
Iraq. Genus Echis represented by E. carinatus which was
collected in the mountainous areas of the northwest of Kerman province.
Family Colubridae
Oppel,
1811, which is the largest snake family consists of aglyphous and
opisthoglyphous snakes, represented by two genera EirenisJan, 1863 andLytorhynchusPeters, 1862 and
two species in this study: Eirenis rafsanjanicus Akbarpour,
Fathinia, Rastegar-Pouyani & Rastegar-Pouyani, 2020 collected from
Kerman province in the south-central Iran, and Lytorhynchus
maynardi Alcock & Finn, 1897 from Zabol county, Sistan & Balouchistan
province, southeastern Iran.
To investigate scale’s microornamentation, dorsal scale samples of each
specimen cut off from the head, mid-part of the body, and tail. The
scales were placed in encoded tubes and filled with distilled water and
neutral soap. The tubes were manually shaken for about one minute to
remove probable impurities, followed by washing with distilled water and
left to dry at room temperature for about 5 minutes. At next step, the
scales were mounted on SEM rotatable aluminum stubs with a thin veneer
of glue. Stubs were coated with gold and photographed using a scanning
electron microscope (Hitachi S-2460 N SEM) at 25kV under various
magnifications (range: 20x–10000x).
To compare the light reflected by the surface of scales, snakes were
examined adopting two different methods: firstly, the whole body of the
snake was photographed at different wavelengths of light using
FluoVision Imaging System, and secondly, thick pieces of the snake’s
dorsal skin were prepared in the same way mentioned above for
microornamentation study. The skin pieces were mounted on the girdles
with glue. Skin reflectance was measured in the 300‒700 nm (UV-VIS)
spectral ranges using a Lambda2S spectrometer (Perkin Elmer, USA).