Aipysurus

Aipysurus is a genus of venomous snakes that belong to the subfamily Hydrophiinae in the family Elapidae. These snakes are special because they live in warm seas, from the Indian Ocean all the way to the Pacific Ocean. They are part of a group known for their venom, which helps them catch food and protect themselves. Because they live in the water, they have special adaptations that let them survive and hunt in the ocean. Scientists study these snakes to learn more about how animals live in different environments and how they have changed over time.

Taxonomy

The genus Aipysurus was first described in 1804 by Bernard Germain de Lacépède. He described a new species found in Australian seas, Aipysurus laevis, which is the main species in this group. This group is part of a small set of sea snakes that give birth to live babies, along with Emydocephalus, found mostly in the seas near Timor, New Guinea, and northern Australia.

The species recognized in the genus Aipysurus include:

Nota bene: A binomial authority in parentheses means the species was first described in a different group than Aipysurus.

In 1983, a group called A. laevis pooleorum was raised to a full species, named Aipysurus pooleorum. The same update also brought back the name Aipysurus jukesii, first described in 1846.

Image	Species	Authority	Common name	Geographic range
	Aipysurus apraefrontalis	M.A. Smith, 1926	Short-nosed sea snake	Western Australia
	Aipysurus duboisii	Bavay, 1869	Reef shallows sea snake; Dubois' sea snake	coastal areas of Australia
	Aipysurus eydouxii	(Gray, 1849)	Spine-tailed sea snake; Marbled sea snake; Beaded sea snake	Western Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland, the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, Indonesia, Peninsular Malaysia, Vietnam and New Guinea
	Aipysurus foliosquama	M.A. Smith, 1926	Leaf-scaled sea snake	Ashmore and Cartier Islands
	Aipysurus fuscus	(Tschudi, 1837)	Dusky sea snake	Timor Sea between Australia, Indonesia and East Timor
	Aipysurus laevis	Lacépède, 1804	Olive-brown sea snake; Olive sea snake	Great Barrier Reef
	Aipysurus mosaicus	Sanders et al., 2012	Mosaic sea snake	Northern Australia and New Guinea
	Aipysurus pooleorum	Smith, 1974	Shark Bay sea snake	Western Australia, midwest coast (Shark Bay)
	Aipysurus tenuis	Lönnberg & Andersson, 1913	Arafura sea snake	Western Australia, from near Dampier to Broome, and in the Arafura Sea