Pressures from the pet and fashion industries are straining monitor lizards in Southeast Asia.

From Live Science:

Some laws are in place to protect the dragon-like creatures from unsustainable hunting and harvesting for the exotic pet trade. But a new study warns that dealers may be overexploiting the reptiles, taking advantage of the scant information conservations have on many of these species in the wild.

In a report in the journal Herpetological Conservation and Biology, researchers assessed the distribution, threats and conservation status of species of monitor lizards that live in Southeast Asia and New Guinea.

[…]

Study researcher Mark Auliya, of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Conservation (UFZ) in Leipzig, explained in a statement that the lizards draw high profits because of their looks and rarity.

“Quite often four-digit amounts are paid, for pairs occasionally even five-digit sums,” Auliya said. “Even the large Komodo dragons are illegally traded, although international trade regulations under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) do not permit commercial trade of wild specimens of this species.”

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Photo: André Koch/Live Science
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By Herp News

A lizard the size of a German shepherd once roamed Myanmar, a new fossil analysis reveals.

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Get up close and personal to a reptile at Baytree Garden Centre at Weston on Saturday.

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This “little project,” or more accurately long term fact-finding mission, started out years ago after several seasons of seeing my diamond pythons breed but not having my females ovulate. Why was this happening? What was I doing incorrectly? Well, I still don’t have the answer to these two questions, but while I was meditating on them I started the current project.

Diamonds are the southeastern most race of carpet pythons or, more correctly, carpets are more northerly and westerly races of the diamond python. It is well documented that diamond pythons at the northerly end of their range intergrade with the southernmost coastal carpet pythons. And, unlike the difficult diamond pythons, the southern carpets are easily bred. How about the diamond-coastal intergrades? Time to find out.

Pure diamond male

So I enlisted the help of Will Bird, owner and cage slave to a wonderfully varied collection of herps at Extraordinary Ectotherms. Will bred diamond and carpet pythons of varying lineages. To give the project a head start I borrowed a couple of first generation diamond-carpet babies and we were on our way.

Female 75 percent pure diamond

The babies matured and were successfully bred to one of my full blooded diamond males. She laid a few eggs amd voila, I had babies that carried 75 percent diamond genes. They matured and were bred to another diamond male and this year I have hatchlings with 87.5 percent diamond genes.

Newly hatched 87.5 percent diamonds, 2013

If continued, when these babies mature, the project will produce snakes having 93.75 percent diamond genes followed next generation by babies that are 96.865 percent diamonds. I’m hoping that these higher percentage diamonds remain easily bred, and I know they will look like pure diamonds. Ease of breeding added to the beauty of the diamond python should interest many hobbyists, old and new alike.
Continue reading “A diamond by any other name is… ?” …read more

Read more here: King Snake

It’s not every veterinarian who can say he’s performed surgery on a rattlesnake. Dr. Scott MacLachlan in Poultney, VT, can, however.

From Vermont NPR’s Ted Levin:

During the spring of 2011, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife in collaboration with the Orianne Society and The Nature Conservancy began a two-year study of the summer range of the timber rattlesnake in western Rutland County.

To that end, transmitters were implanted in the body cavity of twenty-two adult snakes. From late spring through early autumn, the snakes were radio tracked across rough terrain west of Otter Creek. Now that that phase of the project has ended, and Dr. MacLachlan, who had inserted the transmitters, is removing them, as well as taking skin and blood samples from each rattlesnake to check for pathogens.

The day I observed the procedure, the operating room was well lit , with a sink in one corner flanked on both sides by a pink linoleum countertop. The floor was a soft white and textured like the back of a snake. There were cupboards, tanks, computers, glass-fronted cabinets filled with a diversity of surgical instruments, and an aluminum operating table situated beneath a hose descending from the ceiling. The hose, called a gas scavenger, delivers both anesthesia to put the snake to sleep and oxygen to bring it back. There’s a heating pad covered by a blue terry-cloth towel on the operating table to keep the snakes warm.

Read more here; watch video here. …read more

Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Capital Corp. today announced that as of May 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $1.0 billion and its unaudited net asset

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By Herp News

Tortoise North American Energy Corp. today announced that as of May 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $252.1 million and its unaudited n

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By Herp News

Tortoise Pipeline & Energy Fund, Inc. today announced that as of May 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $372.5 million and its unaudi

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By Herp News

Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. today announced that as of May 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $228.9 million and

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Independence Fund, Inc. today announced that as of May 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $412.7 million and its unaudite

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By Herp News

Tortoise MLP Fund, Inc. today announced that as of May 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $1.9 billion and its unaudited net asset value

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Infrastructure Corp. today announced that as of May 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $2.0 billion and its unaudited net

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By Herp News

The study describes how forests converted to palm oil plantations are causing threatened forest dwelling frogs to vanish, resulting in an overall loss of habitat that is important for the conservation of threatened frog species in the region.

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By Herp News

In a single paper, a team of researchers have succinctly described 101 new species of weevils from New Guinea, more than doubling the known species in the beetle genus, Trigonopterus. Since describing new species is hugely laborious and time-intensive, the researchers turned to a new method of species description known as ‘turbo-taxonomy,’ which employs a mix of DNA-sequencing and taxonomic expertise to describe species more rapidly.

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By Herp News

In a single paper, a team of researchers have succinctly described 101 new species of weevils from New Guinea, more than doubling the known species in the beetle genus, Trigonopterus. Since describing new species is hugely laborious and time-intensive, the researchers turned to a new method of species description known as ‘turbo-taxonomy,’ which employs a mix of DNA-sequencing and taxonomic expertise to describe species more rapidly.

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By Herp News

A man accused of animal neglect is scheduled to appear before a judge on Monday.

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Want to do something about declining amphibian populations? It’s as easy as 1-2-3.

Karen Lips is an amphibian ecologist and tropical biologist. She recently wrote a Live Science op-ed about her experience tracking frog populations in Panama, and those of other scientists doing the same thing around the world, showing devastating declines in frog numbers.

She wrote:

What was most concerning was that even widespread species we thought were relatively stable were declining. This matches with the many stories I hear from concerned citizens who say that they don’t see or hear as many frogs in their backyards as they used to. Because those scientists spent the time to count amphibians, they were they able to detect the slow loss in those populations.

We need more studies like these that can go beyond the distribution of threats and can show us how amphibian populations respond to disease so that we can design appropriate conservation and management actions to protect those species.

For example, if population declines are slow and steady, we might have time to experiment with different management practices; but if populations are declining quickly, we might need to establish captive assurance colonies or take tissues for cryopreservation to protect evolutionary lineages.

Likewise, we need to know which age class, sex or subpopulation might be the limiting step in population recovery. If the problem is in the tadpole stage and none survive to become adults, then we might want to design a reintroduction program that adds more adults to the system. If adults are very rare, we might do better to add hundreds of eggs, tadpoles or juveniles to jumpstart recovery.

Numbers are also critical, she said, because the “IUCN Redlist makes decisions on the level of species endangerment based on the number of individuals and the number of populations, and how quickly those numbers are going up or down. The official listing of species is the first step in prioritizing research and conservation efforts to address those threats, and is used to dedicate funding and other resources.”

What can you do as an individual? Contribute data to online databases like http://www.inaturalist.org, or get involved in other citizen scientist projects, she advised.

“Whether the frogs are increasing or decreasing,” Lips wrote, “we need to know: Just how many frogs are there?”

Read the full story here.

Photo: Conservation International-Colombia/Marco Rada …read more

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By Herp News

You know how some issues and things have legs?

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Check out this video “The Perfect Bearded Dragon,” submitted by kingsnake.com user oregonsnakes.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users! …read more

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By Herp News

– Acton will help Turtle Beach meet the growing Chinese consumer demand for video game accessories VALHALLA, New York, June 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Turtle Beach( http://www.turtlebeach.com ), leading audio …

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By Herp News

– Acton will help Turtle Beach meet the growing Chinese consumer demand for video game accessories VALHALLA, New York, June 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Turtle Beach( http://www.turtlebeach.com ), leading audio …

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By Herp News

VALHALLA, N.Y., June 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ –  Turtle Beach , leading audio brand in games, today announced the appointment of Acton as the exclusive distributor of Turtle Beach gaming headsets in China. …

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By Herp News

Turtle nesting season took a hit in 2012 at the start of hurrcane season but ended up as a good year. This year, there is a low start.

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By Herp News

This notice provides stockholders of Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. with information regarding the distribution paid on May 31, 2013 and cumulative

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By Herp News

This notice provides stockholders of Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. with information regarding the distribution paid on May 31, 2013 and cumulative

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By Herp News

This notice provides stockholders of Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. with information regarding the distribution paid on May 31, 2013 and cumulative

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A fossil stored unnoticed in a museum may hold the secret to a question that’s plagued scientists for decades: How did the turtle get his shell?

From Boston.com:

It’s a question so obvious a schoolchild can ask it, but for more than a century, consensus has eluded the paleontologists and evolutionary biologists who study the reptiles and their bony carapaces. Now, a group of scientists at Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution argue that a reptile fossil that’s been gathering dust in museum collections is actually a turtle ancestor, and that its reduced number of ribs, distribution of muscles, and T-shaped ribs could help settle the question once and for all.

In a new paper published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, they unveil the argument that a 260 million-year-old creature called Eunotosaurus africanus was a turtle ancestor, hoping to help resolve a debate that has split the scientific community for decades.

Read all about it here.

Photo: Tyler Lyson/Boston.com …read more

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By Herp News

A lizard from the Caribbean is found alive at a Devon farm in a box of bananas imported from the Dominican Republic.

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It was a long hard day in the house cleaning and cleaning. And cleaning. Cleaning. You get the picture. And I did two loads of laundry. That’s enough.

I go into the kitchen and grab a carrot so I can have a leisurely visit with my favorite shelled wonder: Frankie. Right off I see him on the upper end near the fence. I go over to him.

Crap!

“Frankie! Did you eat the forsythia bush because it took three years to get it big enough to bloom?” I look at Frankie, “You nit-wit.”

Frankie looks at me like he knows a buffalo jumped over the fence and ate the forsythia bush. “I didn’t do that.”

I walk around back to make sure everything is clear and safe. I come across a……well it used to be a knee high pile of branches and twigs….now it’s a strewn across the grass.

“Frankie! Did you do this?”

Frankie observes the broken scatted twigs and branches.

“I didn’t do that.”

Right.

I find the bird bath turned over. I filled it this morning.

“Frankie! Did you do this?”

Frankie approaches the turned over bird bath and proceeds to walk right over it. “Nope. Didn’t do it.”

Then I see the Frankie’s kiddy pool that is supposed to last through this summer. A new rip has appeared that may just speed the end of this pool for Frankie.

“How about this? Did you rip your pool?”

Frankie ignores the obvious. “Didn’t do that.”

I should have seen it. I was looking at the pool and missed the three wooden fence segments I have….had leaning against the chain link fence so Frankie doesn’t push through wire. If that isn’t bad enough the compost barrel filled with Frankie poop was caught in the fence-falling-frenzy and is now on it’s side and all the contents spilled on the lawn. And while we are at it let’s count the wooden boards crashed and thrown down from their cinder block from being toppled over.

“How about this?”

Frankie walks past me and steps up on the nearest fence that lies partially on the ground and partially on the the compost barrel. Frankie walks to the highest point on the fallen fence (about 18 inches high).

Proud as one can be, like a man reaching the very top of Mount Everest, “I did this!” …read more

Read more here: Turtle Times

By Herp News

Scientists have shown the adverse impact of invasive frog species’ songs.

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By Herp News

Abbotsford's Reptile Guy Mike Hopcraft shows off an invasive turtle, the red eared slider, that's putting serious pressure on the endangered native species at Mill Lake. The sliders, tossed into the lake as unwanted pets, are competing with the western painted turtle for food, nesting space and habitat.

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By Herp News

Abbotsford's Reptile Guy Mike Hopcraft shows off an invasive turtle, the red eared slider, that's putting serious pressure on the endangered native species at Mill Lake. The sliders, tossed into the lake as unwanted pets, are competing with the western painted turtle for food, nesting space and habitat.

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Read more here: herpetofauna.com

By Herp News

How did the turtle get its shell? It’s a question so obvious a schoolchild can ask it, but for more than a century, consensus has eluded the scientists who study the reptiles and their bony carapaces.        

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By Herp News

How did the turtle get its shell? It’s a question so obvious a schoolchild can ask it, but for more than a century, consensus has eluded the scientists who study the reptiles and their bony carapaces.        

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By Herp News

How did the turtle get its shell? It’s a question so obvious a schoolchild can ask it, but for more than a century, consensus has eluded the scientists who study the reptiles and their bony carapaces.        

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By Herp News

Through careful study of an ancient ancestor of modern turtles, researchers now have a clearer picture of how the turtles' most unusual shell came to be. The findings help to fill a 30- to 55-million-year gap in the turtle fossil record through study of an extinct South African reptile known as Eunotosaurus.

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By Herp News

Through careful study of an ancient ancestor of modern turtles, researchers now have a clearer picture of how the turtles' most unusual shell came to be. The findings help to fill a 30- to 55-million-year gap in the turtle fossil record through study of an extinct South African reptile known as Eunotosaurus.

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By Herp News

Mike Hopcraft says red-eared slider turtles are being released into the wild, damaging ecosystems

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By Herp News

Mike Hopcraft says red-eared slider turtles are being released into the wild, damaging ecosystems

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By Herp News

Unique among Earth’s creatures, turtles are the only animals to form a shell on the outside of their bodies through a fusion of modified ribs, vertebrae and shoulder girdle bones. The turtle shell is a unique modification, and how and when it originated has fascinated and confounded biologists for more than two centuries. Scientists have recently discovered that the beginnings of the turtle shell started 40 million years earlier than previously thought.

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