Herpetology has long navigated through tangled terrain in Papua New Guinea, where species mislabeling and sparse sampling have clouded scientific understanding. But a recent revision has brought rare clarity—and four unexpected discoveries, reports Akhyari Hananto for Mongabay-Indonesia.
In April 2025, Fred Kraus of the University of Michigan published a study in Zootaxa identifying four new tree snakes in the genus Dendrelaphis, each endemic to a different island in the Louisiade and Woodlark archipelagos in PNG’s Milne Bay.
The species:
- Dendrelaphis anthracina, from Sudest Island (also known as Vanatinai and Tagula Island), is jet black with a white chin and an apparent taste for raptors. Kraus documented it subduing a goshawk with a wingspan of over a meter.
- Dendrelaphis melanarkys, found on Rossel Island, boasts orange eyes and a net-like scale pattern.
- Dendrelaphis atra, from Misima Island, darkens with age to a matte black.
- The smallest, Dendrelaphis roseni, from Woodlark Island, is named in honor of Kraus’s “late friend, snake ecologist and conservationist”, Clark Rosen.
According to the Reptile Database, Papua New Guinea is home to at least 147 species of snake among its 424 documented reptile species—highlighting both its exceptional biodiversity and the vast gaps in scientific knowledge.
Beyond their aesthetics, these snakes underscore the role of “island speciation” in biodiversity. Kraus’s findings—based on hemipenial morphology and color patterns—correct decades of taxonomic muddle.
They also sound an implicit warning: these species, though newly named, may already be under threat from mining, deforestation, and human encroachment. For example, multiple major forest conversion projects have been proposed for Woodlark Island over the past twenty years.
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