Ecological notes on the Annulated Treeboa (Corallus annulatus) from a Costa Rican lowland tropical wet forest

The Annulated Treeboa (Corallus annulatus) is one of nine currently recognized species in the boid genus Corallus. Its disjunct range extends from eastern Guatemala into northern Honduras, southeastern Nicaragua, northeastern Costa Rica, and southwestern Panama to northern Colombia west of the Andes. It is the only species of Corallus found on the Caribbean versant of Costa Rica, where it occurs at elevations to at least 650m and perhaps as high as 1,000 m. Corallus annulatus occurs mostly in primary and secondary lowland tropical wet and moist rainforest and it appears to be genuinely rare. Besides C. cropanii and C. blombergi (the latter closely related to C. annulatus), it is the rarest member of the genus. Aside from information on habitat and activity, little is known regarding its natural history. In November 2001, a herpetological investigation at Caño Palma Biological Station, Tortuguero, in northeastern Costa Rica discovered the presence of C. annulatus from a single preserved specimen held at the biological station. Further surveys in the area detected the species in Manicaria swamp forest that apparently held locally common populations of the snake. Further inventory and abundance surveys over the next ten years resulted in some preliminary morphometric and ecological data on C. annulatus