Small. Fossorial. Uniform gray or black except for yellow ring around neck. Belly yellow, shifting to red under tail, usually with variable pattern of black dots.
Subspecies: D. p. arnyi (Prairie Ring-necked Snake) and D. p. stictogenys (Mississippi Ring-necked Snake)
Arkansas Herpetological Atlas 2019
This species is represented by 1,285 records from 40 sources: 1,085 museum (
), 0 literature (
), 0 research (
), and 160 observation (
), with 40 additional Trauth et al. (2004) locality points remaining unsourced (
). It has been museum vouchered for 57 of 75 counties (), with 2 additional counties having other forms of reported occurrence (). Years of collection range from 1855 to present.
This species occurs commonly throughout the Interior Highlands and more sporadically from the South Central Plains, with additional clusters of records from the northern and southern extents of Crowley’s Ridge. Two records from Craighead County (ASUMZ 15160 from 1971 and ASUMZ 31353 from 2009) lack specific locality information. The currently recognized subspecies in Arkansas, D. p. arnyi (■) from the Interior Highlands and D. p. stictogenys (■) from the South Central Plains and Crowley’s Ridge, have weak morphological differentiation and are not likely to represent phylogenetically meaningful taxa.
