THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY

Reptilia    Squamata (part)    Crotalidae  

Black-tailed Rattlesnake
Crotalus molossus Baird and Girard, 1853

SSAR 9th Edition Comments:
 Muñoz-Mora et al. (2022, Herpetozoa 35:, 141–153) using mtDNA found three lineages that were found that correspond to currently recognized subspecies of C. molossus. The authors suggested that the lineages likely represented species but did not make taxonomic changes pending information from nDNA. See also Myers et al. (2017, Journal of Biogeography 44: 461–474 and Myers et al. (2019, Molecular Ecology 28: 4535–4548).

Range maps are based on curated specimens and provided gratis by CNAH.
(Created by Travis W. Taggart; Version: 2024.02.20.10.01.05)
Download GeoJSON polygon range file: - 0.1 MB

Province/State Distribution:
USA: Arizona New Mexico Texas

First instance(s) of published English names:
Black-tail Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus: Yarrow, Henry C. 1882. Check list of North American Reptilia and Batrachia with catalogue of specimens in U. S. National Museum. Bulletin of the United States National Museum (24):1-249); Dog-faced Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus: Stejneger, Leonhard H. 1895. The poisonous snakes of North America. Annual Report of the United States National Museum 1893(2):337-487); Black Tail (Crotalus molossus: Cope, Edward D. 1900. The crocodilians, lizards and snakes of North America. Pages 153-1270 in Report of the U. S. National Museum for the Year Ending June 30, 1898 , Washington, D. C. pp.); Black-tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus: Van Denburgh, John. 1922. The Reptiles of Western North America: An Account of the Species Known to Inhabit California and Oregon, Washinton, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, British Columbia, Sonora, and Lower California. Volume I. Lizards. California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco. 556pp.); Black-tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus: Schmidt, Karl Peterson and D. D. Davis. 1941. Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada. C.P. Putnam and Sons, New York. 365pp.); Black-tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus molossus: Schmidt, Karl Peterson and D. D. Davis. 1941. Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada. C.P. Putnam and Sons, New York. 365pp.); Northern Black-tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus molossus: Schmidt, Karl P. 1953. A Check List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles. 6th Edition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. 280pp.);

Taxon Links:

  
Catalog of American Amphibians and Reptiles
  
The Reptile Database
  
NatureServe
  
iNaturalist
  
GenBank
  
USGS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database

Selected References:
1853 Baird, Spencer F. and Charles Girard. Catalogue of North American Reptiles in the Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Part 1. Serpents. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 2(5):xvi + 172
1940 Gloyd, Howard K. The rattlesnakes, genera Sistrurus and Crotalus. Chicago Academy of Sciences Special Publication 4(1):1-266
1956 Klauber, Laurence M. Rattlesnakes. Their habits, life histories, and influence on mankind. 2 Volumes. University of California Press, Berkeley, California. pp.
1972 Klauber, Laurence M. Rattlesnakes. Their Habits, Life Histories, and Influence on Mankind. 2 Vols. 2nd ed. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. pp.
1972 Baker, Robert J., George A. Mengden, and James J. Bull. Karyotypic studies of thirty-eight species of North American snakes . Copeia 1972(2):257-265
1980 Price, Andrew Hoyt. Crotalus molossus. Catalogue of American Amphibians and Reptiles (242):1-2
2001 Tsai, Inn-Ho, Y-Hsuan Chen, Ying-Ming Wang, Ming-Chang Tu and Anthony T. Tu. Purification, sequencing, and phylogenetic analyses of novel lys-49 phospholipases A2 from the venoms of rattlesnakes and other pit vipers. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics 394(2):236-244
2012 Anderson,Christopher G. and Eli Greenbaum. Phylogeography of northern populations of the Black-Tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus Baird and Girard, 1853), with the revalidation of C. ornatus Hallowell, 1854. Herpetological Monographs 26(1):19-57
2016 Myers, Edward A., Michael J. Hickerson, and Frank T. Burbrink. Asynchronous diversification of snakes in the North American warm deserts. Journal of Biogeography 44(2):1-14
2017 Bezy, Robert L., Philip C. Rosen, Thomas R. Van Devender, and Erik F. Enderson. Southern distributional limits of the Sonoran Desert herpetofauna along the mainland coast of northwestern Mexico Mesoamerican Herpetology 4(1):138-167
2017 Myers, Edward A., Michael J. Hickerson, Frank T. Burbrink. Asynchronous diversification of snakes in the North American warm deserts. Journal of Biogeography 44(2):461-474
2019 Myers, Edward A., Alexander T. Xue, Marcelo Gehara, Christian Cox, Alison R. Davis Rabosky, Julio Lemos‐Espinal, Juan E. Martínez‐Gómez, and Frank T. Burbrink. Environmental heterogeneity and not vicariant biogeographic barriers generate community‐wide population structure in desert‐adapted snakes. Molecular Ecology 28(20):4535-4548
2019 Watson, Jessica A., Carol L. Spencer, Drew R. Schield, Brett O. Butler, Lydia L. Smith, Oscar Flores-Villela, Jonathan A. Campbell, Stephen P. MacKessy, Todd A. Castoe, and Jesse M. Meik. Geographic variation in morphology in the Mohave Rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus Kennicott 1861) (Serpentes: Viperidae): Implications for species boundaries. Zootaxa 4683(1):129–143
2022 Munoz-Mora, Víctor Hugo, Marco Suárez-Atilano , Ferruccio Maltagliati , Fabiola Ramírez-Corona, Alejandro Carbajal-Saucedo, Ruth Percino-Daniel, Joachim Langeneck , Maristella D’Addario, and Armando Sunny. A tale about vipers’ tails: Phylogeography of black-tailed rattlesnakes. Herpetozoa 35:141–153
2024 Pillod, David S., Michelle I. Jeffries, Robert S. Arkle, and Deanna H. Olson. Climate futures for lizards and snakes in western North America may result in new species management issues Ecology and Evolution 14(10):1-23
2024 Myers, Edward A., Rhett M. Rautsaw, Miguel Borja, Jason Jones, Christoph I. Grünwald, Matthew L. Holding, Felipe Grazziotin, and Christopher L. Parkinson. Phylogenomic discordance is driven by wide-spread introgression and incomplete lineage sorting during rapid species diversification within rattlesnakes (Viperidae: Crotalus and Sistrurus) Systematic Biology syae018:

THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY — Accessed: Saturday 26 April 2025 22:10 CT