The new snake has been given the name Dipsas aparatiritos. The genus Dipsas includes the snailsuckers, a unique group of snakes that feed on soft-bodied prey including snails extracted from their shells, slugs, and earthworms. The species epithet "aparatiritos" is Greek for unnoticed: a reference to the fact that the snake had remained hidden in plain sight for over forty years at a very well-studied field site.

Scientists Dr. Julie Ray, University of Nevada—Reno, Paola Sánchez-Martínez, Abel Batista, Daniel G. Mulcahy, Coleman M. Sheehy III, Eric N. Smith, R. Alexander Pyron and Alejandro Arteaga, have described the new species in a paper published in ZooKeys.

Dipsas aparatiritos has the characteristic bulbous head and brown-and-black patterning of many of the snakes in the genus. It looks very similar to its closest known relative, Dipsas temporalis, which is also found in Panama. It is now known that D. aparatiritos is endemic to, or known only from, the western and central parts of the country.

Panama has a rich diversity of snakes, with over 150 documented species in a country the size of Ireland or the U.S. state of South Carolina. Dr. Ray has documented over 55 species of snakes in Parque Nacional General de División Omar Torrijos Herrera where the newly described snake is best studied, and over 80 species in Coclé Province in Central Panama. She published a field guide, Snakes of Panama, in 2017.