Happy Rattlesnake Friday! For Black Friday, we just HAD To bring you this Black-tailed Rattlesnake for our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user bigdnutz ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!
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By Herp News
What doesn’t kill you could cure you. A growing interest in the therapeutic value of animal venom has led data scientists to create the first catalog of known animal toxins and their physiological effects on humans.
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By Herp News
Every two years, primate experts compile a report that highlights 25 primates that are in severe crisis. These are the most endangered monkeys, apes and lemurs in the world. On Tuesday, an international coalition of 63 primate conservation experts — including the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission (SSC), Bristol Zoological Society, the International Primatological Society (IPS), and Conservation International – released the latest edition of the report “Primates in Peril: The world’s 25 most endangered primates”. The 25 primates are most threatened by habitat destruction, hunting for food and illegal wildlife trade. “The purpose of our Top 25 list is to highlight those primates most at risk, to attract the attention of the public, to stimulate national governments to do more, and especially to find the resources to implement desperately needed conservation measures,” Russell Mittermeier, Chair of the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group and Executive Vice Chair of Conservation International, said in a statement. “In particular, we want to encourage governments to commit to desperately needed biodiversity conservation measures. Roloway monkeys have been steadily extirpated in Ghana. Photo by Hans Hillewaert CC BY-SA 3.01, Wikimedia Commons. As in 2012, Madagascar is on top again with five species making it to the list, according to the report. Indonesia and Vietnam are a close second with three species each in the list, followed by Brazil, which has two. One primate species each from Cameroon, China, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Ghana, India,…
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We are thankful for sausages and skinks. Skinks are kinda like sausages, right? We are thankful for this Shingleback Skink in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user albinorosy ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!
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The Delta map turtle is one of the “sawbacked” types.
At the time I decided I wished to photograph the Delta map turtle in the wild, it was considered a named subspecies, Graptemys nigrinoda delticola, the darker and easternmore of the 2 forms of the. black-knobbed map turtle. Even back then, the subspecific differences, hence validity, had been questioned. And with the 2 races interbreeding widely and seeminly at every given opportunity, the differentiating features between the western and the eastern races were fast melding. It was becoming ever more difficult to separate them by appearance alone. But it still seemed that the map turtles at the eastern most periphery of the species range north of Mobile Bay were darker overall, often had linear postorbital markings, and had larger dark plastral figures than examples from further west. So, when, a couple of springs ago, I still wanted to see this turtle, Curtis suggested a “can’t miss” locale and Kenny and I, in the region for other reasons, headed northward from Mobile Bay.
Within 10 miles the sky darkened, the sun was obscured, immense cumulus clouds gathered and we drove into storms so intense that traffic was almost at a standstill. Still we crawled northward, eventually left the rain (but not the clouds) behind. An hour and a half later, in late afternoon, when we arrived at the map turtle destination it was still so dark that the cameras had problems focusing on the few Delta maps that were still hoping for sunlight on exposed snags. Although we decided to remain overnight and try our luck the next morning, cloudy conditions continued to prevail. The few pix we managed to take were suitable for vouchers but marginal (as you can see here) for more definitive purposes. Next time though—next time!
Continue reading “The Search for the Delta Map Turtle” …read more
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By Herp News
A smuggled and confiscated crocodile ashtray, now part of the “Buyer Beware Exhibit” at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Photo by Bill Butcher courtesy of USFWS [dropcap]L[/dropcap]ast March, a four-year manhunt finally paid off when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) investigators teamed with Mexican officials to arrest a notorious American wildlife trafficker. Isaac Zimerman, 66, was apprehended near Metepec, Mexico and later extradited back to the US. In 2009, he’d been charged for using his company, the Hawthorne, California-based River Wonders LLC, to smuggle piranhas and river stingrays from South America for sale in the US — species barred under California state law. He was later slapped with other charges for trafficking pirarucu fish (Arapaima gigas) out of the US into Canada and Bermuda while on pre-trial release. Zimerman turned fugitive in 2010. Special agents with USFWS tracked his movements through Europe to Israel and finally into Mexico, an investigation that included assistance from US Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security, the US Department of Justice and INTERPOL. In a 13-count indictment, Zimerman is now also accused of a slew of federal charges, including conspiracy, obstructing an investigation, false statements and falsifying documents. On November 9th, he pleaded guilty in US District Court to knowingly exporting pirarucu — the world’s largest freshwater fish, which are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) — without required permits. He could face up to 10 years in prison. Map courtesy of…
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By Herp News
Genes for important skin proteins arose in a common ancestor shared by humans and turtles 310 million years ago, a genome comparison has discovered.
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A new snake crosses your table, although it exhibits traits of a known venomous snake, it is missing several key markers.
What is it? Is it venomous? If so, just how venomous is it?
The situation becomes less an exercise in academics when the unknown subject of your research bites you.
That is the situation herpetologist Karl P. Schmidt found himself in at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1957. After being bitten his time was limited and he knew it. So he did what any good researcher would do, he documented it. He knew there was no accessible anti-venom, but never believed he had received the full dose of venom. In a short video, you spend those last hours with him as he documents his experience.
Read more at Science Friday. …read more
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Photo: Science Friday
A new snake crosses your table, although it exhibits traits of a known venomous snake, it is missing several key markers.
What is it? Is it venomous? If so, just how venomous is it?
The situation becomes less an exercise in academics when the unknown subject of your research bites you.
That is the situation herpetologist Karl P. Schmidt found himself in at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1957. After being bitten his time was limited and he knew it. So he did what any good researcher would do, he documented it. He knew there was no accessible anti-venom, but never believed he had received the full dose of venom. In a short video, you spend those last hours with him as he documents his experience.
Read more and watch the video at Science Friday. …read more
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Fallout from two highly publicized cobra escapes in Florida is leading to changes in Florida venomous snake regulations in 2016.
According to a memo released by the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission (see above), the state is banning the use of melamine/particle board enclosures due to their tendency to be warped or damaged by moisture. Venomous Permit holders in Florida have until February 28th, 2016 to bring their caging into compliance.
Also, the Florida is moving ahead with the revision of it’s venomous regulations, a process begun last year, before the escapes, with a series of public meetings that began in December of 2014. Based on the input from those 8 meetings, FWC staff is reviewing the recommendations and is preparing draft rules and options for stakeholder input.
If you have questions about either memo, please contact the FWC Captive Wildlife Office at 850-488-6253
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This four pack of itty bitty ATBs are keeping their eyes on you in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user micahdenton ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!
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By Herp News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEgfGlsHZWw&feature=youtu.be In a rare moment, a camera trap videoed a rare Amur tigress, trailed by her three cubs. The camera belongs to a network of camera traps set up by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Russia’s Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve to study Amur tigers. In the video, “the cats are using an overgrown forest road as a travel corridor; the same type of road patrolled by poachers with spotlights,” according to a statement released by WCS. Fewer than 400 adult and sub-adult Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) remain in the wild, over 90 percent of which occur in Sikhote Alin region. The Sikhote Alin Biosphere Reserve, where the video was captured, covers around 400,000 hectares (~1,000,000 acres), and is the largest protected area within the Amur tiger’s range, according to WCS. The video, which shows a mother with her cubs, provides a glimmer of hope for these endangered big cats, WCS noted in the statement. To protect tiger populations in the region, WCS is also working with logging companies there to stop usage of logging roads in and around the reserve. In March this year, another camera trap set up by WCS caught an unusual series of photos of an Amur tiger father followed by the mother and three cubs.
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Gallery Photo by user dallashawks
Currently the genomes of only 9 species of reptiles (among 10 000 species) are available to the scientific community. To change this a team at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Swit- zerland, has produced a large database including, among others, the newly-sequenced genome of the corn snake, Pantherophis guttatus, a species increasingly used to understand the evolution of reptiles. Within the same laboratory, the researchers have discovered the exact mutation that causes albinism in that species.
Suzanne Saenko collaborated with a Swedish team, to identify in the corn snake the mutation responsible for amelanism, a form of albinism due to a defect in the production of melanin (the black and brown pigments of the skin). The skin of the wild type corn snake exhibits a light orange background colour covered with a pattern of dark orange dorsal saddles and lateral blotches that are out- lined with black, however, some individuals lack all signs of melanin in the skin and eyes. The Swiss team decided to search for the DNA mutation that determines that specific coloration. To this end, they bred wild-type corn snakes with amelanistic individuals and they sequenced each offspring born from that cross.
Thanks to the newly-sequenced genome of the corn snake, the precise identification of other mutations responsible for multiple variations of snake skin coloration will be greatly facilitated.
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By Herp News
Twenty-three days before a major earthquake in 2011 animals began disappearing from part of Yanachaga National Park in Peru. By 24 hours before the quake they had completely vacated the area. A recent study documenting the animals’ retreat with camera-trap data suggests that animals may have an uncanny ability to sense and flee from irritating portents of seismic activity. Historically, scientists have dismissed accounts of animals acting strangely before earthquakes, mostly due to the anecdotal nature of the accounts and a lack of reliable sources. “[T]he infrequency and unpredictability of earthquakes means that most relevant pre-earthquake studies suffer, of necessity, from small sample sizes and from difficulties with reproducibility under comparable conditions,” states the recent study, published in the journal Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. However, a few credible observations of odd animal behavior do exist. For instance, before a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009, researchers detected unusual toad behavior in areas where they also detected atmospheric disturbances that typically occur before earthquakes. Paca rodent (Cuniculus-paca). Photo courtesy of the TEAM Network. The present study relied on images from motion-capture cameras set up in Yanachaga National Park by the Virginia-based conservation group Tropical Ecology and Assessment and Monitoring Network. For 30 days leading up to the earthquake — and one day after — the cameras operated round the clock in nine separate locations throughout the park, capturing animal movements. Zoologist Rachel Grant of Hartpury College in Gloucester, England, and her colleagues geophysicist…
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By Herp News
A family of vicuñas at Apolobamba, Bolivia. Photo by Daniel Maydana [dropcap]C[/dropcap]orsino Huallata Ibarra was helping his parents round up their herd of llamas at their home in the Bolivian countryside when the sound of gunshots made him jump. Scanning the horizon, distant movement caught his eye. He could just make out the forms of several vicuñas — alpaca-like animals whose wool is some of the finest and most expensive in the world — seemingly fleeing from something. Ibarra, a veterinary professor at the Public University of El Alto in La Paz, knew well what the gunfire likely meant. Across their range in the high Andean plateau, vicuñas — a protected species — are increasingly targeted by poachers who leave behind a trail of dead animals stripped from the neck down of their valuable hides. “Every shot that occurs in the highlands are vicuñas being hunted,” Ibarra says. Poachers also do not hesitate to turn their guns on any human who tries to interfere. Last January, two Chilean police officers were killed at the Peruvian border when they stopped vicuña traffickers. And that same month, Ephraim Mamani Arevillca, a state conservationist and friend of Ibarra’s, was found murdered. “In Bolivia, he was the only governmental employee fighting on the frontlines against vicuña-related crooks,” Ibarra says. Poachers are presumably to blame for Arevillca’s death, although no arrests have been made. Vicuñas are herded and captured in the community of Villazón. Photo by Daniel…
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By Herp News
Among the 5,000 existing species of mammals, more than 100 have their genome sequenced, whereas the genomes of only 9 species of reptiles (among 10,000 species) are available to the scientific community. This is the reason why a team of researchers has produced a large database including, among others, the newly-sequenced genome of the corn snake, a species increasingly used to understand the evolution of reptiles. Within the same laboratory, the researchers have discovered the exact mutation that causes albinism in that species.
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Such a common find for most of us, but a welcome one come spring! What a great Painted Turtle field shot for our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user PATMAN ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!
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By Herp News
A crested serpent eagle was saved from being trafficked on Sunday by residents of Melung, a village on the slopes of the volcanic Mount Slamet in Indonesia’s Central Java province. Upon hearing a man identified as A arranging to sell the Spilornis cheela bido by phone, villagers intervened to try to talk him down. They explained that trafficking protected species is prohibited by Indonesian law and punishable by five years imprisonment and a 100 million rupiah ($7,300) fine. But A remained determined to sell the eagle, even turning violent and emotional, at one point attacking the others with a block of wood. Dozens of villagers surrounded A and ultimately threatened that if he didn’t back down, they would bring him to the police station. “Our explanation about the law didn’t even enter his mind. He wasn’t afraid of criminal threats,” Margino, one of those who intervened, told Mongabay. “We had to use force to intimidate him. Finally he handed over the eagle and went home empty-handed.” This crested serpent eagle was saved from being trafficked on Sunday by villagers in Java. Photo courtesy of the Biodiversity Society The villagers released the eagle into the wild near the Melung forest. Although it initially appeared to have difficulty flying, after a few minutes it was able to soar into the air. This isn’t the first time Melung residents have acted in support of conservation laws. Once, they expelled a pellet gun enthusiast who had come to practice in…
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The entire head of some red-cheeked mud turtles is suffused with red.
Whether you consider the red-cheek a full species (Kinosternon cruentatum) or a subspecies of the scorpion mud turtle (K. scorpioides cruentatum), there can be little argument that some examples are one of, if not the, prettiest of the genus.
Long (and with good reason) a hobbyist favorite, the amount of red on the face of this 4 to 6 inch long aquatic turtle, can vary from little more than a facial smudge (and even this may dull with advancing age) to a long-lasting brilliant suffusion encompassing the entire head.
This small and easily kept turtle is native to the Yucatan Peninsula region (southeastern Mexico and Belize). Wild collected adult examples are still occasionally available and a fair number of hatchlings are produced in captivity.
Although these (and other kinosternids) can be kept in aquaria with shallow clean water, and although they seldom bask even when it is easy for them to do so, I do offer a shelf (or smooth flat rock, where they can rest an inch or two below the water’s surface. The turtles usually thrive on a diet of high quality pelleted food but will appreciate a periodic offering of a nightcrawler or a freshly killed minnow. Hardy and easily kept, be prepared to have your red-cheeks for decades.
Continue reading “Red-cheeked Mud Turtle” …read more
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By Herp News
The climate zones boreal forests evolved in are moving north, and trees can’t keep up. Key species in North America’s boreal forests, like black spruce, are disappearing from areas where they once thrived. According to Dennis Murray, a professor of ecology at Trent University in Ontario, the impacts of this tree loss are being felt across the entire ecosystem. “You lose spruce and you lose everything that lives in spruce and that is basically everything in the boreal forest,” Murray recently told Yale 360. “We’re seeing the same phenomena that we’ve seen with moose with lynx and snowshoe hares. And caribou are going belly up very, very fast. Their ranges are receding northward rapidly.” To be sure, the boreal, also known as taiga, is a sprawling and complex ecosystem, and while it may be retreating in some places, it is thriving, or at least surviving, in others. Still, the overall trend is so alarming that scientists are making increasingly dire projections about the boreal’s future as global temperatures continue to rise. A team of forest experts from the Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Natural Resources Canada and the University of Helsinki in Finland published an article in August in the journal Science that found most boreal forests have so far proven capable of coping with current disturbances, but they face a variety of unprecedented threats to their health due to climate change. “Boreal forests have the potential to hit a tipping point this century,” IIASA researcher Anatoly…
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By Herp News
Brazilian Hyacinth Macaws. Photo by Alexander Yates licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. [dropcap]W[/dropcap]ildlife trafficking casts a toxic net of negative impacts across the entire landscape it exhausts. The nightmarish media imagery emerging from the poaching battlefield of Africa has set the horrific tone for public understanding of Earth’s accelerating Sixth Extinction Event: an obliterating trifecta of climate change, habitat loss, and poaching for foreign and domestic consumption and the pet trade. Now Latin America — home to the world’s last uncontacted peoples, the planet’s carbon-trapping Amazonian lungs, and a breathtaking diversity of species — is emerging as another epicenter for criminal trafficking networks feeding the global black market in exotic animals. Latin America’s trafficking woes have largely gone unnoticed so far, maybe due to its other pressing environmental concerns: rapid deforestation, dam building, oil extraction, mining and illegal incursions into protected areas. But the destruction of the region’s wildlife is ongoing and accelerating. The trafficking onslaught in Latin America is following the same pervasive patterns seen in Africa: it is partly driven by Chinese money, Chinese extractive industries, and the unappeasable Chinese market for “traditional medicines,” dietary delicacies and other wildlife uses. It is also facilitated by endemically corrupt Latin American officials; weak, loophole-rife laws; and indifferent enforcement. A vigorous, and largely publically condoned, domestic wildlife trade adds to the devastation. The countless shipping containers arriving at US ports everyday overwhelm the 130 inspectors of the USFWS seeking…
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By Herp News
Scientists are warning of the risks that seismic surveys may pose to sea turtles. Widely used in marine oil and gas exploration, seismic surveys use airguns to produce sound waves that penetrate the sea floor to map oil and gas reserves.
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Pygmy Freshwater Crocodile – Photo: Adam Britton
Long time friend of kingsnake.com and famed crocodillian researcher Adam Britton is attempting to save the Pygmy Freshwater Crocodiles in Australia. Although they are considered the same species as the Freshwater Crocodiles (Crocodylus johnstoni), researchers are looking into genetic variations that may lead to their listing as a brand new species.
The biggest threat to the Pygmy Freshwater Crocodiles is sadly the invasive Cane Toad (Rhinella marina). The crocs appear to be very susceptible to the toxins from the toads. Working in a partnership with local landowners, the project has passed it’s first hurdle. Now it needs our support.
Read more about the Pygmy Freshwater Crocodiles and watch the video at Tiny Toothies. …read more
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Photo: Adam Britton
Friend of kingsnake.com and famed croc researcher Adam Britton is attempting to save the Pygmy Freshwater Crocodiles in Australia. Although they are considered the same species as the Freshwater Crocodiles, there are genetic variations that may lead to a brand new species. The biggest threat to the group is sadly the invasive Cane Toad. The crocs appear to be very susceptible to the toxins from the toads. Working in a partnership with local landowners, the project has passed it’s first hurdle. Now it needs our suport.
Read more and see the video at Tiny Toothies. …read more
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By Herp News
Six months ago, 80 arboreal camera traps and 40 more cameras on the ground were deployed by scientists in the Manu Biosphere Reserve in Peru, one of the world’s most biodiverse conservation areas. The researchers took the cameras down just a few weeks ago, and they provided Mongabay with a sneak peek at the results, which include footage of numerous threatened and endangered species that often go undetected by traditional survey methods. Species caught on camera in the reserve include the endangered Peruvian woolly monkey, the endangered black-faced spider monkey, a near-threatened, tree-dwelling cat commonly known as the margay, and one of the largest birds of prey in the world, the near-threatened harpy eagle. Jhon Florez, the head of Manu National Park, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, said in a statement that “The videos of the harpy eagle are simply spectacular. To capture footage of different individuals, across different sites, of such an emblematic bird is special for Manu, and is a great attraction to people who wish to visit Manu and witness its unbelievable wildlife first hand.” Harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja) can be a full meter tall (3.3 feet) with a wingspan twice that — they’re so big they prey on mammals like monkeys and sloths. Here’s footage to prove it: https://youtu.be/0n9F3sfzLu8 Three different individuals were filmed, two adults and one not yet fully mature, all recorded in a native community where hunting still occurs. “Although these sites are hunted and appear to have…
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By Herp News
Amphibians occupy almost every ecological niche, from the highest tropical trees to the most fetid pools of desert water. Brightly colored and cryptically camouflaged, they have evolved an astounding array of defenses – about half of all amphibians are poisonous. But despite their adaptability, these animals are in serious trouble, all over the world. And now, it seems, their best defense may be their biggest weakness. According to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, poisonous amphibians may be more likely to go extinct than their benign counterparts. These results surprised study authors Kevin Arbuckle and Michael Speed of the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. They designed their study to test a hypothesis in evolution, called escape-and-radiate. Scientists first used this to describe competition between poisonous plants and the caterpillars that eat them. It holds that natural selection favors adaptations that help prey escape predators, because those traits will be passed down to future generations. At the same time, any traits that help predators catch their prey will be passed down, too. “It’s been described as an evolutionary arms race, and rightly so,” Arbuckle told Mongabay. The toxic Panamanian Golden Frog has gone extinct in the wild. Photo by Rhett A. Butler According to Arbuckle, few studies had actually tested this hypothesis in animals. Amphibians, with their diverse defenses against predators and their well-studied fossil record, seemed to be the perfect natural laboratory. “Plus,” Arbuckle added, “they’re exceptionally cool.”…
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By Herp News
Photos captured by camera traps could seal the fate of an alleged tiger poacher in Thailand, WCS announced last Wednesday. Thailand police have confiscated tiger skin and body parts at a police checkpoint in Mae Sot District in Western Thailand. Since poaching of tigers in Thailand is illegal, proving the geographic origin of tiger parts is crucial to prosecute the accused. Fortunately, camera traps set up across Thailand’s Western Forest Complex by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have come to the rescue. A tiger’s stripe pattern is unique and comparable. By comparing stripe pattern of the confiscated tiger skin with those wild tigers photographed by hundreds of camera traps, WCS experts have identified the dead tiger: a female last photographed alive in Huai Kha Khaend (HKK) Wildlife Sanctuary this year. The tigress had also been photographed with cubs in some photos earlier this year. The fate of the cubs, estimated to be two years old now, remains unknown, according to the statement by WCS. Experts compared the confiscated tiger skin with camera trap photos and found that it matched a tigress last photographed alive by a remote camera in Huai Kha Khaend Wildlife Sanctuary with cubs. Photos courtesy of WCS. Thailand police have arrested the alleged poacher, who now awaits trial. Since, the camera trap photos confirm that the tigress was last seen inside a protected area in Thailand, WCS remains optimistic about a conviction. “The Wildlife Conservation Society commends the government of Thailand for arresting an alleged tiger poacher for possessing a…
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A shout out to the little guys! Loving this Vinales Anole in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user macraei ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!
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By Herp News
A wildlife trafficker who was caught trying to sell three baby orangutans on Facebook was sentenced to two years imprisonment and fined 50 million rupiah ($3,653) in Indonesia’s Aceh province last week. The man, a 29-year-old university student named Rahmadani, was arrested in a sting on August 1. Besides the Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii), authorities found him with two red-backed sea eagles (Haliastur indus); a great argus (Argusianus argus), which is a type of pheasant; and a taxidermied Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi). “Hopefully the conviction serves as a deterrent for would-be perpetrators of environmental crimes, including traffickers of protected plants and animals,” said Genman Hasibuan, head of the Aceh branch of the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA), which assisted in the sting. “This verdict is the first such conviction in Aceh,” said Panut Hadisiswoyo, director of the Orangutan Information Center, which also helped track the man. “It is an important milestone for law enforcement efforts in regard to environmental crimes in Aceh.” One of the baby orangutans that was confiscated from a trafficker in Aceh in August. Photo by Junaidi Hanafiah However, Panut said the man should have received a stronger sentence. The maximum penalty for wildlife trafficking under the 1990 Conservation Law is five years imprisonment and a 100 million rupiah fine. He noted that in neighboring North Sumatra province in July, a man who was caught trying to sell just one baby orangutan was sentenced to two years behind bars and a 10…
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By Herp News
Visitors to the tropics remember the bright colors. Take the blue-and-yellow macaw with its egg-yolk breast and turquoise back – “the usual gaudy colouring of the intertropical productions,” as Charles Darwin put it. But recent research in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography contests the idea that wildlife and flowers in the tropics are more colorful than those in temperate climes. They may, in fact, be blander. People, including scientists, have a bias for “thinking that tropical regions are filled with really vibrant and exuberantly colorful things,” said lead author Rhiannon Dalrymple, who completed the study at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “But there’s never been any strong test of the idea.” To assess how colors change from one place to the next, researchers have relied on evaluating the hues of specimens by eye. But for the first time, Rhiannon and colleagues applied an objective lens: measuring color with instruments. The approach also allowed them to capture wavelengths of light, such as ultraviolet, that are invisible to people but apparent to bees, birds, and other animals. The researchers amassed species and subspecies of a wider breadth of flora and fauna than in any previous study about color: museum specimens of 424 kinds of butterflies and 570 kinds of birds, as well as 339 kinds of freshly collected flowers. Spanning 34.5 degrees of latitude in eastern Australia, the samples hailed from tropical rainforest to heathland. The researchers looked at how the average of different properties – like color…
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By Herp News
A recent report, published by the Biological Society of Washington, details the discovery of a new rat species, Batomys uragon, on the mountainous island of Luzon in the Philippines.A member of the research team, Lawrence Heaney of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, responded to Mongabay’s request for an interview on the significance of the discovery and B. uragon’s conservation future.Mongabay: What is so unique about the discovery of the new Batomys species?Lawrence Heaney: This new species, Batomys uragon, is a member of a group of mammals called “cloud rats” that live only in the Philippines — a branch on the tree of life that occurs nowhere else. This discovery brings the number of cloud rat species to eighteen, twelve of which occur on Luzon Island, the largest island in the Philippines.These animals form an adaptive radiation, [in a] habitat restricted to the [islands of the] Philippines, much the same as lemurs are restricted to Madagascar. Cloud rats feed on plant material in the canopy of rainforest that grows on mountains above 1,000 meters [3,280 feet] in elevation. They’re rodents, distantly related to familiar pests like rats and mice, and in appearance quite similar to squirrels or chinchillas. A shot of thickly forested Mt. Isarog in 2005. Photo by Danny Balete.Mongabay: Where, when, and how was the discovery made?Lawrence Heaney: Members of our research team first encountered this species in 1988, on Mt. Isarog, a dormant volcano in southern Luzon designated as a national park. We were conducting…
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By Herp News
Is the Wild West using the most up-to-date technology for managing wildlife and researching conservation issues? Kyran Kunkel, Lead Scientist at American Prairie Reserve and Affiliate Professor in the Wildlife Biology Program at the University of Montana, wants to ensure that it is. He spoke with WildTech about technologies he relies on for his work on the Reserve and those he has used previously in carnivore research, as well as new technologies he hopes to see for wildlife management and restoration of North America’s grassland ecosystems in the near future. American Prairie Reserve – North America’s “Serengeti”. Photo credit: American Prairie Reserve Throughout his career, Kunkel has investigated the movement and foraging patterns of a suite of carnivores, including grizzly bears, wolves, and mountain lions, in the American West. In the late 1990s, he began shifting his attention to helping create and restore American Prairie Reserve – North America’s most expansive wildlife reserve and restoration project, protecting native bison, swift foxes, and pronghorn, among its more iconic mammals. In helping to initiate the reintroduction of bison back onto the Reserve, located in northeastern Montana, Kunkel is ensuring the species is returned to a portion of its historic native range. We spoke to him about how his team has used technology to better understand the use of the prairie ecosystem by bison and other wildlife. WildTech: Which technologies have you used for reintroducing bison to the Reserve? Kyran Kunkel: We have GPS collars on bison. The collars…
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Happy Rattlesnake Friday! Here’s lookin’ at you kid! Gotta love a field find like this rattlesnake in our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user sluggo781 . Be sure to tell them you liked it here!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here! …read more
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photo by Grant Adams
Grant Adams will always have a little something extra to remember his time in the Peace Corp. Adams, a recent graduate in biology from Denison University was just hoping to find some scientific task to keep his resume up to date. He sent an e-mail to a mailing list for ecologists, offering to collect data for them during his two-year stint in the Andes. He heard back from Tiffany Doan, a biologist from the University of Central Florida who asked him to collect lizards instead.
“I had no interest in lizards or snakes at all, but it sounded like something fun I could do,” “It’s going to be one of those lifelong stories, discovering a species,” “I’ll always carry that with me.” – Grant Adams
It wasn’t long before they had their lizard, a species Doan had never seen before, and it quickly became obvious that the lizard had never been formally described. Doan’s studies formalized the lizard in the literature as Euspondylus paxcorpus.
Read more at The Washington Post …read more
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By Herp News
Invasive species are great hitchhikers. They float in the ballast of ships, lurk in luggage, stick to unwashed sports gear, and cling to the soles of hiking boots. Scientists focus on stopping them from spreading because, once a new species gets rooted, it is expensive to manage and nearly impossible to remove. Shipping and industry are the major pathways for invasive species, but studies have also shown that tourists can spread them into protected wilderness. Most tourism studies have focused on local cases. Now, new research in the journal PLOS ONE has explored the global ties between tourists and invasive species for the first time. The analysis showed that non-native species are significantly more common and more diverse in high-tourism areas worldwide, said Dr. Lucy G. Anderson, who led the study as a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, U.K. “We know that cargo ships [and other] commercial pathways are really an important vector for invasive species,” Anderson told Mongabay. “People have said ‘and tourism,’ but when you look back through the references and studies no one’s really tried to quantify that.” She and a team of colleagues dug through the literature, compiling almost 5,000 studies that linked tourism to non-native species. They hoped to “take lots of experimental examples and see if there’s a pattern across the board,” Anderson explained. This map shows the locations of the 32 studies of invasive species included in Anderson’s worldwide analysis. Green dots represent research…
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By Herp News
Juan Santamaría International Airport. Photo by Freestylerob [dropcap]E[/dropcap]ach year millions of travelers stream through the gates of Costa Rica’s Juan Santamaría airport in route to one of the country’s many natural wonders. But often when tourists leave, a piece of the country’s biodiversity goes with them. Turtle shell bracelets, reptile-skin wallets, bird feathers and even live animals have all been snuck out of Costa Rica through the airport as souvenirs. But the uneducated tourist is just the tip of the illegal wildlife trafficking iceberg. Professional smugglers slip unknown amounts of wildlife out in passenger planes at Costa Rica’s main airport, and exporters are known to sneak illegal wildlife into legitimate commercial shipments. Wildlife traffickers of either type are rarely caught, and when a seizure is made, penalties are low. Security at the San José airport relies on x-ray machines and body searches to uncover whatever wildlife may be secreted away in suitcases, while customs officials are saddled with the enormous tasks of distinguishing souvenirs from contraband, and legal wildlife exports from fraudulent ones. In both cases, there is plenty of room for illegally transported wildlife to slip through the cracks. “Customs officials aren’t experts in particular species of animals,” explained Benito Coghi, the director of Costa Rican customs. “We know things slip through, we just don’t know the full extent.” The smugglers who get caught Last September, German tourist Maciej Oskroba headed for the check out counter at Juan Santamaría Airport carrying a bag full of dirty t-shirts, swim trunks…
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Although not common, red phase brown anoles are well documented in Florida populations.
This pretty little female brown anole visited our back deck yesterday. She caught the eye of an amorous male brown anole of normal color. As far as aberrancies go, orange headed female and all orange male brown anoles are not particularly rare. And each time I see one I am reminded of the first one I ever saw. An adult male, it was in a terrarium at a reptile dealership and had just been sold to a well-known herpetoculturist for the whopping sum of several hundred dollars. Since then I have seen a dozen or so males and about 3 times that many orange-headed females in the wild. But I was recently told that a vendor at an east coast herp expo had a number of orange phase brown anoles that he was offering at exorbitant prices.
Build it and they will come. Offer it and they will buy. And then there was P.T.Barnum’s supposed statement, but I won’t go there!
Continue reading “A Red (orange, really)-headed Brown Anole” …read more
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A True Giant. This Komodo Dragon takes center stage in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user cowboyfromhell s! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!
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Tuatara Gallery photo with the late Rico Walder
The rare New Zealand Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) doesn’t have a penis but it may go a long way to help scientists understand phallic evolution.
Researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville found that the tuatara develop tiny nubbins as an embryo but the development of these nubbins stalls and they never form into a proper penis. Nubbins represent an early trace of the phallic development process. This initial growth suggests the phallus developed only once throughout the evolution of mammals and reptiles, according to the UF researchers.
Their research indicates that the tuataras lost a phallus, indicating that the basic penis evolved only once.
Check out more at Wired.CO.UK
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By Herp News
Prionopelta xerosilva, named after the dry forests in which it exclusively lives in northwestern Madagascar. During a recently concluded study conducted over the last ten years, researchers from the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) working with the Madagascar Biodiversity Center (MBC) have discovered and described six new species of ants belonging to the genus Prionopelta. Commonly, known as ‘Dracula Ants’ for their unique feeding behavior, these new members of Prionopelta have been found to be tiny, ferocious social predators living within the subterranean, microscopic ecosystem of the forest floor soils in Madagascar. For much of the last decade, members of the MBC, led by entomologists Brian Fisher and Rick Overson from CAS conducted extensive sampling across Madagascar’s diverse habitat by sifting forest floor spoils to find the tiny, colorless ants. Malagasy scientists and trainees at the MBC assisted with the research and collected ants throughout the duration of the study as part of an ongoing effort to further understand, and educate others about, Malagasy biodiversity. P. laurae the smallest of the Malagasy Prionopelta, measuring around 1.5 mm in length and 0.2mm wide, is much smaller than the commonly known fruit fly, and skinner than many single-celled amoebae. Unique Sampling Method One of the main tools the team used for sample collection is the deceptively simple ‘Winkler’ trap. Organic material is gathered from the forest floor and suspended to dry in a special bag. As the organic material dries out, the natural behavior…
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