New records of the endangered Southeast Asian Box Turtle, Cuora amboinensis (Testudines, Geoemydidae), from Mizoram, northeast India

Abstract

The Southeast Asian Box Turtle, Cuora amboinensis (Daudin, 1801) (Family: Geoemydidae), is the most diversified and widespread taxon in the genus Cuora (Gray, 1856), distributed throughout the southeast Asian mainland (Myanmar, Thailand, Indo-China, Indo-Malaya and the Philippines), north-eastern India (Assam, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh), the Nicobar Islands and the hills of eastern Bangladesh (Moll and Vijaya, 1986; Anderson, 1872; Bhupathy and Choudhury, 1992; Frazier and Das, 1994; Das, 2002). The species consists of four subspecies – C. a. amboinensis Daudin, 1802 (East Indian Box Turtle or Wallacean Box Turtle), C. a. couro Schweigger, 1812 (Indonesian Box Turtle), C. a. kamaroma Rummler and Fritz, 1991 (Malayan Box Turtle) and C. a. lineata McCord and Phillipen, 1998 (Burmese Box Turtle) (Schoppe and Das, 2011).