A logical break-up of the genus Telescopus Wagler, 1830 (Serpentes: Colubridae) along phylogenetic and morphological lines.. Australasian Journal of Herpetology ®, Issue 35, published 20 July 2017, pages 43-53. ABSTRACT The Catsnake genus Telescopus Wagler, 1830 as currently understood includes a diverse assemblage of distantly related and morphologically similar snakes from south-west Asia, southern Europe and north, central and southern Africa. The various species groups are self-evidently morphologically and regionally distinct and so it is surprising that not all have been formally named in accordance with the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (Ride et al. 1999) or earlier codes. This paper breaks up the genus along logical lines, the result being as follows: Telescopus Wagler, 1830 (type species: Coluber obtusus Reuss, 1834) includes the North African assemblage commonly referred to in the literature as “the dhara-obtusus group”. Tarbophis Fleischmann, 1831 (type species: Tarbophis fallax Fleischmann, 1831) is treated as a subgenus of Telescopus and includes the species with a distribution centred on the Middle-east and nearby parts of southern Europe and south-west Asia. Ruivenkamporumus subgen. nov. is erected to accommodate two divergent species within Telescopus with a distribution centred on Pakistan and Iran. Elfakhariorumserpens gen. nov. is erected to accommodate the very different four described species-level taxa from south-west Africa, and another from sub-Saharan Africa, with Matsonserpens subgen. nov. erected to accommodate the sub-Saharan African species Dipsas variegata Reinhardt, 1843. Two species, formerly treated as variants of “Tarbophis nigriceps Ahl, 1924” are herein formally named as Telescopus (Tarbophis) mannixi sp. nov. and Telescopus (Tarbophis) gocmeni sp. nov.. Keywords: Taxonomy; nomenclature; snakes; Telescopus; Africa; Southern Africa; Middle-East; Catsnake; Colubridae; Tarbophis; semiannulatus; variegatus; nigriceps; new genus; Elfakhariorumserpens; new subgenus; Ruivenkamporumus; Matsonserpens; new species; mannixi; gocmeni.
