New Snake Species Found in New Guinea Named After Guns N’ Roses Guitarist Slash

Hidden in the lowland forests of northeastern New Guinea, a ground-dwelling snake had been slithering beneath the radar of science for decades. Researchers have now officially named it a new species, and they gave it a name that would make any rock fan do a double-take. Meet Lielaphis slashi, named in honor of Saul Hudson, better known as Slash, the iconic guitarist of Guns N’ Roses.

Formally described in the journal Zootaxa, the snake belongs to a group called Papuan groundsnakes, a secretive collection of mostly nocturnal reptiles found mainly in New Guinea. Scientists confirmed the new species using genetic data and physical measurements of museum specimens, making it the 20th known member of its genus. Despite New Guinea’s reputation as one of the most biologically rich places on Earth, this snake had been misidentified in field notes for years, hiding in plain sight inside natural history collections.

Naming a species after a rock musician is unusual, but the paper explains the reasoning clearly. According to the authors, Slash has shown long-running support for museums and zoos and has frequently advocated for snakes in various media. One of the paper’s senior authors also credits much of her scientific writing to listening to Slash’s music, spanning his work with Guns N’ Roses, Slash’s Snakepit, and Velvet Revolver.

How a New Snake Species Was Hiding in Plain Sight

For years, the specimens that would become Lielaphis slashi were mislabeled. Field collectors had recorded them as a different species entirely, Lielaphis parvus, a snake known to live only on Yapen Island, off the coast of New Guinea’s mainland. When researchers ran genetic analyses on 90 tissue samples representing 12 previously described species, something didn’t add up. A cluster of individuals was genetically distinct and located in the completely wrong place to be L. parvus.

To test whether these mainland specimens could actually belong to the island species, the team built computer models using climate and environmental data to predict where each species could potentially survive. Yapen Island scored very low in habitat suitability for the mainland specimens, with a mean score of just 0.27 out of 1.0. The models showed high suitability scores above 0.70 concentrated in the eastern lowland areas of mainland New Guinea, exactly where the new specimens were collected.

Alongside the genetic and physical differences the team had already documented, the habitat modeling added weight to the conclusion that the mainland snakes were unlikely to be L. parvus. Taken together, the evidence pointed to something new.

What Sets Lielaphis slashi Apart

Lielaphis slashi is a medium-sized ground snake with a reddish-brown back and a white or cream-colored belly. It has no distinctive patterns or markings on its body, which helped it go overlooked for so long. Researchers can tell it apart from its closest relatives by subtle but consistent physical differences, including the number of scale rows along its body and lips, and the structure of the scales on its underside near the tail.

Specimens were collected from forested areas in Sanduan, East Sepik, and Madang Provinces of Papua New Guinea. One was found as high as 208 meters above sea level; others turned up at sea level near the coast. Based on current records, the species lives north of the Central Cordillera, the mountain range that runs down the middle of New Guinea like a spine. Researchers note it may also occur in the Indonesian part of New Guinea, north of those same mountains.

Like others in its group, L. slashi is nocturnal and secretive, which helps explain why so little is known about how it actually lives. The paper notes that its natural history information is lacking.

A Second Mystery Snake and Why New Guinea Keeps Surprising Scientists

That same research turned up a second puzzling group of snakes that may also be new to science but didn’t quite meet the bar for a formal species description. This group, found in similar territory and initially mislabeled as a common species, showed some genetic and physical differences from its nearest relative. The genetic distance between them was relatively small, ranging from 2.8% to 3.3%, and population-level analyses couldn’t clearly separate them from an already-known species.

For now, the authors are treating this group as a regional variation, possibly a distinct color form of Lielaphis aplini, a species previously known only from a different area. If that interpretation holds, it would represent a notable expansion of L. aplini‘s known range to include both sides of New Guinea’s central mountain range, something no other species in this genus has been documented doing. The authors say more sampling and analysis is needed to settle the question, work they note is already in progress.

New Guinea sits at a crossroads of geology and biology. Millions of years ago, tectonic forces pushed up the Central Cordillera, creating a towering barrier that split plant and animal populations over time and drove them down different evolutionary paths. That process is one reason the island holds such extraordinary diversity. For many snakes in the Lielaphis genus, the mountain range appears to be an important geographic barrier that separates populations.

Conservation pressure adds urgency to this kind of work. New Guinea faces documented threats from industrial agriculture and logging, and knowing what species exist there is a basic requirement for any meaningful effort to protect them. As the paper puts it, the cryptic diversity of this secretive group of snakes “likely remains significantly underexplored.”

With Lielaphis slashi now officially on the books, the count of known species in its genus stands at 20. Based on how many surprises this group has already produced, the authors say more unrecognized species are likely still waiting to be identified.

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