By Herp News
The genome of the western painted turtle , one of the most widespread, abundant and well-studied turtles in the world, has been sequenced. The data show that, like turtles themselves, the rate of genome evolution is extremely slow; turtle genomes evolve at a rate that is about a third that of the human genome and a fifth that of the python, the fastest lineage analyzed.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
As hedgehogs all over the United Kingdom wake up from their winter hibernation, activists will be carefully counting their hogs. Every year, the hedgehog population in Britain’s rural towns declines by an estimated 5 percent. But between 2011 and 2012, a survey conducted by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), a UK-based animal activism group, saw the country’s European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) population fall a dismal 32 percent.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
The genome of the western painted turtle, one of the most widespread, abundant and well-studied turtles in the world, has been sequenced. The data show that, like turtles themselves, the rate of genome evolution is extremely slow; turtle genomes evolve at a rate that is about a third that of the human genome and a fifth that of the python, the fastest lineage analyzed.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
( BioMed Central ) The genome of the western painted turtle one of the most widespread, abundant and well-studied turtles in the world, is published this week in Genome Biology. The data show that, like turtles themselves, the rate of genome evolution is extremely slow; turtle genomes evolve at a rate that is about a third that of the human genome and a fifth that of the python, the fastest …
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
A new species of caecilian – a worm-like amphibian – has been discovered in French Guiana.
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By Herp News
In recent journeys to Madagascar, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Philippines, and French Polynesia, scientists from the Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes and the University of Barcelona have discovered not only five new crustaceous species, but also the existence of a new genus in the family.
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By Herp News
Exposure to commonly used pesticides directly disrupts brain functioning in bees, according to new research in Nature. While the study is the first to record that popular pesticides directly injure bee brain physiology, it adds to a slew of recent studies showing that pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, are capable of devastating bee hives and may be, at least, partly responsible for on-going Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
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What do you suppose would happen if a dozen venomous snakes were slithering all over a football stadium in the U.S.? Mass exodus, right? Not in India.
From The Indian Express, via ESPN:
A dozen poisonous snakes were spotted at the Kalyani Stadium, the venue at which Mohan Bagan beat Arrows 3-2 during an I-league fixture on Sunday.
None of the players or the ball boys were bitten but the snakes were spotted near the dressing rooms and on the field of play after full-time.
Officials of the Kalyani Municipality ensured that the snakes were removed from the stadium.
The All India Football Federation (AIFF), however, is unlikely to ban the Kalyani Stadium as an I-League venue.
Read more here.
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Read more here: King Snake
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By Herp News
Scientists have discovered two new species of mouse lemurs in Madagascar, bringing the total number of diminutive primates known to science to 20.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
Custom label and sticker manufacturer Lizard Label announces the availability of an exciting new product line – wide-web real wood paper perfect for labels and packaging.Fairfield, NJ (PRWEB) March 27, 2013 Lizard Label, the expert label and sticker manufacturer, has announced the availability of a new product line – Sheer Veneer Fine Wood Paper. Sheer Veneer Fine Wood Paper is the world’s first …
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By Herp News
TURTLE RIVER MONTESSORIA team of seven students – Arthur Frigo, Anthony Frigo, John Killgore, Twain Glas, Colin Ciarfella, Ben Frei and James Lovelady – recently placed first in their division at Odyssey of the Mind regional competition at Suncoast High.
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By Herp News
Arneek Wright tried to hide the turtle and snakes and was additonally charged with tampering with evidence, a Fish and Wilife official said.
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By Herp News
A protected alligator snapping turtle was confiscated after its owner tried to hide it under a pile of dirty laundry inside of a washing machine, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission said Tuesday.
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By Herp News
A protected alligator snapping turtle was confiscated after its owner tried to hide it under a pile of dirty laundry inside of a washing machine, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission said Tuesday.
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By Herp News
Scientists sequenced the genome of the aye-aye, a bizarre lemur species, for the first time. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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By Herp News
Eight Central African nations have announced they will send a thousand soldiers after poachers responsible for slaughtering 89 elephants, including over 30 pregnant mothers, in Chad earlier this month. The mobilization of soldiers and law enforcement officers could be a sign that Central African countries are beginning to take elephant poaching, which has decimated populations across Africa, more seriously.
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By Herp News
Arneek Wright tried to hide the turtle and snakes and was additonally charged with tampering with evidence, a Fish and Wilife official said.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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The Smithsonian National Zoological Society announced Friday that the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project has successfully bred an endangered amphibian. From their release:
The limosa harlequin frog (Atelopus limosus), an endangered species native to Panama, now has a new lease on life. The Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project is successfully breeding the chevron-patterned form of the species in captivity for the first time. The rescue project is raising nine healthy frogs from one mating pair and hundreds of tadpoles from another pair.
“These frogs represent the last hope for their species,” said Brian Gratwicke, international coordinator for the project and a research biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, one of six project partners. “This new generation is hugely inspiring to us as we work to conserve and care for this species and others.”
Nearly one-third of the world’s amphibian species are at risk of extinction. The rescue project aims to save priority species of frogs in Panama, one of the world’s last strongholds for amphibian biodiversity. While the global amphibian crisis is the result of habitat loss, climate change and pollution, a fungal disease, chytridiomycosis, is likely responsible for as many as 94 of 120 frog species disappearing since 1980.
Between its facilities at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama, and the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center in El Valle, Panama, the rescue project currently cares for 55 adult limosa harlequin frogs of the chevron-patterned form and 10 of the plain-color form. The project has had limited success breeding the plain-color form of this species, and has successfully bred other challenging endangered species, including crowned treefrogs (Anotheca spinosa), horned marsupial frogs (Gastrotheca cornuta) and toad mountain harlequin frogs (A. certus).
Read the full release here. …read more
Read more here: King Snake
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By Herp News
Prepare to enter the shadowy world of Tinfoil Tuesday. This week, an extraterrestrial bodyguard protects the president, according to conspiracy theorists. But the White House dismisses the allegations and says it’s too costly.
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By Herp News
Mumbai, March 26 : For over a century and quarter, the tiny Geckoella Jeyporensis, a small lizard measuring up to 10 cm, was given up as extinct. Now it has been spotted in the Eastern Ghats, causing scientists to cheer.
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The journal Herpetology is reporting that a team of Japanese researchers has discovered a new species of newt in the Vietnamese provinces of Ha Giang and Cao Bang.
From Phys.org:
The new specimen was found at the museum in Japan, and its curator contacted Kanto Nishikawa, one of the researchers involved in the study. Initial observations indicated nothing out of the ordinary, but after closer inspection, the team realized that its morphology didn’t conform to any known species. They subsequently performed genetic analysis which confirmed the newt as a new species: Tylototriton ziegleri— Ziegler’s crocodile newt—after the prominent German researcher Thomas Ziegler, who has contributed greatly to the study and conservation of amphibians and reptiles in Vietnam.
Read the full story here. …read more
Read more here: King Snake
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By Herp News
If ever a story deserved the tagline, Brought to You by Drunken Stupidity, it’s this one: Earlier this year in London, an intoxicated teenager stole an Aldabra giant tortoise from a safari park, sold it on Facebook, only to be caught soon thereafter when his DNA was matched to saliva on a beer can left at the scene of the crime.
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By Herp News
Around 4,000 years ago intrepid Polynesian seafarers made their way into an untamed wilderness: the far-flung Pacific Islands. Over a thousands or so years, they rowed from one island to another, stepping on shores never yet seen by humans. While this vast colonization brought about a new era of human history, it also ended the existence of well-over a thousand bird species according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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By Herp News
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is one of the world’s leading environmental organizations. Founded in 1895 (originally as the New York Zoological Society), the WCS manages 200 million acres of wild places around the globe, with over 500 field conservation projects in 65 countries, and 200 scientists on staff. The WCS also runs five facilities in New York City: the Central Park Zoo, the New York Aquarium, Prospect Park and Queens Zoos, and the world renowned Bronx Zoo.
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By Herp News
Marine- turtle nesting season began in March on Florida beaches from Brevard through Broward counties
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By Herp News
Marine- turtle nesting season began in March on Florida beaches from Brevard through Broward counties, although two leatherbacks laying their eggs in late February got a head start. May 1 marks the official start in other…
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By Herp News
Adam Steff took Flo (pictured), a 4.5lb juvenile Aldabra giant tortoise , from Woburn Safari Park in Milton Keynes after he wandered into her enclosure while drunk.
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By Herp News
As part of its annual Spring Spectacular, Moorpark College’s animal training program celebrated the 90th birthday of a Galapagos tortoise .
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By Herp News
Two new beautifully coloured woodlizard species from the genus Enyalioides have been discovered during expeditions to the unexplored jungles of Cordillera Azul National Park in the Peruvian Andes. Woodlizards Enyalioides are represented by as little as ten currently recognized species that occur on both sides of the Andes.
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By Herp News
The province’s tiniest school division is in turmoil — parents are alleging Turtle River trustees make all their key decisions behind closed doors, have ignored widespread community pleas to restore cancelled shops programs and refused to consult taxpayers on the budget. And, ominously, the
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By Herp News
Two loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings enter the ocean in 2010 at Flagler Beach.
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By Herp News
Two loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings enter the ocean in 2010 at Flagler Beach.
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By Herp News
A group of biologists and conservation scientists meeting in Sumatra warned that potential changes to Aceh’s spatial plan could undermine some of the ecological services that underpin the Indonesian province’s economy and well-being of its citizens. After its meeting from March 18-22 in Banda Aceh, the Asia chapter of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) issued a declaration [PDF] highlighting the importance of the region’s tropical forest ecosystem, which is potentially at risk due to proposed changes to its spatial plan.
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By Herp News
The long, lonely road walked by a Galapagos tortoise is pictured in an award-winning photograph by a researcher and artist
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By Herp News
SOUTHAMPTON, England, March 21 (UPI) — A prehistoric flying reptile has been named for the 9-year-old British girl who found fossilized bones of the creature on the Isle of Wight, scientists said.
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By Herp News
Scientists have discovered two new species of woodlizards from the Peruvian Amazon. Woodlizards, in the genus Enyalioides, are little-known reptiles with only 10 described species found in South and Central America. Described in a new paper in ZooKeys, both new woodlizards were found in Cordillera Azul National Park, the nations third-largest.
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What!
What are you waking me up for? I don’t want to wake up. Ten o’clock is too early to wake up.
If you want me up then you’re gonna have to pull me out of mynewspaper.
Fine. See if I care if you take away my newspaper. You’re mean!
No I don’t want to go outside. You can’t make me go outside. I am gonna sit right here all day long and not move….except to poop. Then I will sit here on my poop all day because you made me get up.
I’m not gonna walk outside. I am happy to sit here inside the gecko room until summer get’s here.
No way are you talking me into leaving the gecko room. You go right ahead and cluck and whistle and offer carrots. I am not going outside.
Go ahead and push me outside cause I am not walking on my own.
Good luck putting me on that cart. It will be the last time you ever lift anything over 10 pounds. Your gonna be set up in bed for a week.
Oh, right, drag me outside. I’m gonna tell everyone how mean you are. You are so cruel. There is just no reason to drag me outside when I am perfectly happy inside.
Fine. I’ll sit here in the sun but I am not going into the back yard. This is as far as I go. I don’t need to go in the backyard. You can’t make me go.
Oh, right, get dad to trick me into walking into the backyard. Unfair to bring outsiders into this situation.
Lock the gate behind me! You’re gonna have to because if you left it open I would just turn around and come back inside.
I am going inside. As soon as the gate opens.
Fine! I’m going over here by the fence and wait for that gate to open.
What? It’s time for bed? But I need my sun time. Can’t I just sit out here for a few more minutes. What if I just sleep out here. It’s so nice.
Hey! It’s cold out here! Someone let me inside right now! …read more
Read more here: Turtle Times
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Geckos and other arid zone reptiles may be in for a tough battle to survive, thanks to climate change.
From the science site Phys.Org:
In a study, published in the journal Diversity and Distributions, the team led by PhD researcher Paul Duckett, used a new modelling technique to predict if the Australian gecko; the Tree Dtella (Gehyra variegata), could successfully move from one location to another as climates changed.
While previous studies have focused on predicting those regions that will become suitable for species to live in the near future, this research has measured a species ability to even make the journey in time
“The real question isn’t where they are going but can individuals actually reach a suitable new home before it becomes critical to their survival,” says Duckett.
Read the rest here. …read more
Read more here: King Snake
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What’s up with the tiny heads of sea snakes? Evolution, say scientists at the University of Adelaide in Australia. From the university website:
An international team of scientists led by Dr Kate Sanders from the University of Adelaide, and including Dr Mike Lee from the South Australian Museum, has uncovered how some sea snakes have developed ‘shrunken heads’ – or smaller physical features than their related species.
Their research is published today in the journal Molecular Ecology.
A large head – “all the better to eat you with” – would seem to be indispensable to sea snakes, which typically have to swallow large spiny fish. However, there are some circumstances where it wouldn’t be very useful: sea snakes that feed by probing their front ends into narrow, sand eel burrows have evolved comically small heads.
The team has shown normal-shaped sea snakes can evolve such “shrunken heads” very rapidly. This process can lead to speciation (one species splitting into two).
Read more here.
Photo: University of Adelaide …read more
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By Herp News
Ants are an important ecological group in both degraded and natural habitats. They interact with many other species and mediate a range of ecological processes. These interactions are often interpreted in the context of ant mosaics, where dominant species form strict territories, keeping other ants out. This segregation between ant species is well-documented in monoculture plantations. Now new research published in Ecography has shown that these changes are driven by the replacement of rainforests with monocultures and not the arrival of non-native species.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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