Interspecific diurnal refuge sharing in Cuban snakes of the genus Tropidophis (Tropidophiidae)

Abstract

W ith 17 species, all endemic, the Cuban Archipelago has the richest diversity of snakes in the genus Tropidophis (Tropidophiidae) (Hedges 2002;Díaz and Cádiz 2020; Uetz et al. 2021). This diversity is reflected in the co-occurrence of several species, probably the result of the evolution of traits that allowed the ecological segregation of three distinct ecomorphotypes (terrestrial, semi-arboreal, and generalist) (Rodríguez-Cabrera et al. 2016;2021a;2021b;Rodríguez-Cabrera and Blanco Morciego 2021). Jamaica is the only West Indian island other than Cuba with more than one species of Tropidophis (three), but they have allopatric distributions and phenotypic divergence is minimal (Schwartz and Henderson 1991;Hedges 2002; Powell and Henderson 2012). However, despite the apparent niche partitioning among sympatric species of Tropidophis in Cuba, species belonging to seemingly different ecomorphotypes have