Darren W. Pietersen - Field Guide to Snakes and other Reptiles of Zambia and Malawi (Struik Nature Field Guides)

Table of Contents

Published by Struik Nature

(an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd)

Reg. No. 1953/000441/07

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PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000 South Africa

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First published in 2021

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Copyright in text, 2021: Darren Pietersen, Luke Verburgt, John Davies

Copyright in photographs, 2021: As indicated alongside individual images or at Photographic Credits on

Copyright in illustrations, 2021: Gary Nicolau

Copyright in maps, 2021: Darren Pietersen, Luke Verburgt, John Davies

Copyright in published edition, 2021: Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Publisher: Pippa Parker

Managing editor: Roelien Theron

Editor: Helne Booyens

Designer: Dominic Robson

Proofreader: Emsie du Plessis

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner(s).

ISBN 978 1 77584 737 3 (Print)

ISBN 978 1 77584 738 0 (ePub)

Front cover: Katanga Bush Viper (Frank Willems), Anchietas Chameleon (Darren Pietersen), OShaughnessys Thick-toed Gecko (Gary Brown), Leopard Tortoise (Errol Pietersen)

Half-title page: Speckled Thick-toed Gecko (Luke Kemp)

Title page: Marbled Tree Snake (Luke Verburgt)

Contents page: Rhombic Egg-eater, Flap-necked Chameleon (Luke Verburgt)

Spine: Rhombic Egg-eater (Luke Verburgt)

Back cover: Olive Sand Snake, Nile Crocodile (Luke Verburgt)

To my parents, Errol and Michle, and my brother Ryan. Thank you for all your love and for always supporting my ideas, no matter how crazy they were.

Darren Pietersen

To Peter Snyman, who fuelled my passion for herpetofauna and shared his immense knowledge with me. And to my mom, Janine, my wife, Ursula, and my best friend, Sam none of this would have been possible without you, and I am forever grateful for the love, support and opportunities youve given me.

Luke Verburgt

To my parents, Peter and Ona, who inspired so much of my passion for nature; my sister Lynne, for putting up with my obsessive birdwatching; and my partner, Lindy, for all her love, patience and support.

John Davies

A field guide of this nature would not have been possible without the assistance of numerous individuals and organisations.

We gratefully acknowledge the following parties for sharing their data with us: Ditsong National Museum of Natural History (South Africa), specifically Lauretta Mahlangu; Port Elizabeth Museum, Bayworld (South Africa), specifically Werner Conradie; and the Bulawayo Museum (Zimbabwe), specifically Shiela Broadley. The Biodiversity Institute, specifically Ren Navarro and Les Underhill, are thanked for sharing the ReptileMAP data with us. Werner Conradie, Johan Marais, Colin Tilbury, Norman Barrett, Gary Brown, Frank Willems and Paul Lloyd are also thanked for sharing their personal data, and many photographs, with us. Thanks to the many people who took the time to share their reptile observations on ReptileMAP and other public citizen science platforms: you have greatly contributed towards shaping the geographic distributions that we present in this field guide.

We are very grateful to the team at the Vegetationmap4Africa project ( vegetationmap4africa.org ) for allowing us to use their vegetation map in the predictive modelling of the species geographic distributions.

Gary Nicolau is thanked for drawing the excellent scale diagrams included throughout this field guide.

For allowing us to use their photographs, we thank Andr Coetzer, Andr van Hecke, Bill Branch, Carl Huchzermeyer, Caspian Johnson, Colin Tilbury, Derek Solomon, Errol Pietersen, Fabio Pupin, Frank Willems, Gary Brown, Gary Nicolau, Harald Hinkel, Johan Marais, Joseph Zulu, Laurent Chirio, Lesley Reynolds, Liam Baisley, Luis Ceriaco, Luke Kemp, Matej Dolinay, Michele Menegon, Mike McLaren, Nick Evans, Norman Barrett, Paul Lloyd, Ronald Auerbach, Stephen Spawls, Tom Mazuch, Tyrone Ping, Warren McCleland and Werner Conradie.