Black Ring-headed Dwarf Snake: first melanistic record on the Anatolian mainland

The snake was found under a rock at about 17:30 during fieldwork between Çağman and Demre, in Antalya Province. Its back was black from head to tail tip. In this fairly young animal, some greyish-white scales were scattered over the neck. The belly was greyish-white and darkened towards the tail.

The body measured 155 mm from snout to vent, and the tail 47.3 mm. Scale counts and the dark cap and collar pattern on the head confirmed the species: it is a Ring-headed Dwarf Snake (Eirenis modestus), not another small Eirenis from southern Anatolia. Searching the area turned up no other individuals of the species, so the paper rests on this single snake. It is now kept in the zoology collection of Dokuz Eylül University.

Melanism is an excess of dark pigment that turns an animal black. It stands out in this species because it is usually pale: light brown to greyish, often with a darker collar and a dark cap on the head that fades with age.

According to the paper, all earlier black individuals came from islands. In 1986 they were described from the Yassıca and Sarıot islands in Muğla Province. In 2018 a juvenile and an adult were reported from the Greek island of Kastellorizo, and in 2025 one adult from Symi. The Antalya snake is the first such record from the mainland.

The authors set out two explanations. Under thermal melanism, dark animals are favoured in cool climates because they warm up faster. Under Gloger’s rule, darker colour is expected in warm, humid places, where vegetation is denser, the ground is darker and a dark animal is better hidden.

Çağman–Demre and the earlier island sites all have a fairly humid Mediterranean coastal climate. The authors say this single find fits Gloger’s rule better than thermal melanism. They add that one record cannot test either idea, and that the black colour may just be a rare, non-adaptive mutation: the usual pale form still dominates across southern Anatolia. They call for more sampling on the mainland and nearby islands.

The Ring-headed Dwarf Snake is part of Georgia’s fauna. The 2026 checklist of Georgia’s amphibians and reptiles lists it for eastern and central Georgia; one of the documented sites is Tbilisi. It is a small, harmless snake of dry, stony ground that spends the day under flat stones.

The paper does not deal with Georgian populations and reports no black individual from Georgia. More on the species is on its profile and on the snakes hub.