INTRODUCTION Coral snakes are typically small and venomous terrestrial snakes of the family Elapidae, which also includes the large cobras and kraits. These snakes now encompass the tribe Calliophini of the subfamily Elapinae (Castoe et al., 2007). The coral snakes are the least known group of venomous snakes in Asia and the Indian sub- continent. Five species of coral snakes are cur- rently known to occur in India, four belonging to the genus Calliophis and one to the genus Sinomicrurus (Slowinski et al., 2001). All four species of Calliophis are found in peninsular India and three of these have their distributions mainly along the Western Ghats (Smith, 1943; Whitaker and Captain, 2004). The Bibron’s coral snake, Calliophis bibro- ni, was irst described by Jan (1858) from the “Western Ghats”. Subsequently, reports were made by Beddome (1864) from Manantoddy, Malabar (now Waynaad district, Kerala). Bou- lenger (1896) presented scale counts of four specimens collected by Beddome. Later, Wall (1919) reported on a young specimen of this species and regarded the species as rare. The lo- cality reported for this specimen was Rockwood Estate, in the “Nilgiri Wynaad”, at 3800–4000 ft. elev., a locality currently in the Nilgiri dis- trict of Tamil Nadu. Shankar and Ganesh (2009) report on two female specimens representing the northernmost localities known for the spe- cies, from the Agumbe region of Karnataka, and Hamadryad Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 1 – 10, 2010. Copyright 2010 Centre for Herpetology, Madras Crocodile Bank Trust. Redescription of Bibron’s coral snake, Calliophis bibroni Jan 1858 with notes and new records from south of the Palghat and Shencottah Gaps of the Western Ghats, India V. Deepak 1,2 , S. Harikrishnan 1,3 , Karthikeyan Vasudevan 1,4 and Eric N. Smith 5 1 Wildlife Institute of India, P.O. Box #18, Dehradun 248 001, Uttarakhand, India. 2 Email: deepaksalea@gmail.com 3 Email: s.harikrishnan09@gmail.com 4 Email: karthik@wii.gov.in 5 Department of Biology, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, USA. Email: e.smith@uta.edu (with four text-igures) ABSTRACT.– Bibron’s coral snake, Calliophis bibroni Jan 1858, is a rare and venomous snake known from the Nilgiri region of the Central Western Ghats, in northern Kerala, southern Karnataka and north-western Tamil Nadu. We present a summary of morphological characters from type material, other voucher specimens, and fresh collections made from the Western Ghats. We illustrate the colour of adults and a juvenile, and present an analysis of the colour pattern showing ontogenetic change. Using all known locality records, we provide a map of the distribution of the species that extends the range of the species considerably, from the Agumbe hills in the north to the Agastiyar hills in the south, across the Palghat and the Shencottah gaps. One of the specimens reported here represents the largest known individual to date (880 mm TL) and another, the smallest ever collected (185 mm TL). KEYWORDS.– Elapidae, Elapinae, Calliophini, Calliophis bibroni, Bibron’s coral snake, India, Western Ghats, Palghat Gap, Shencottah Gap.