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Minnesota prairie snakes
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The following is from the Bemidji Pioneer Elizabeth Baier, MPR.org | 91.3 FM Jeff LeClere, a herpetologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, holds an American racer snake Wednesday morning his team trapped and tagged. Alex Kolyer | MPR news Kellogg — In a sandy tract of grassland where the Zumbro River empties into the…
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Marine crocodilians and sea surface temperatures
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A dyrosaurid, a marine crocodilian, swimming in the warm surface waters during the end of the Cretaceous period. Illustration credit: Guillaume Suan. The ancestors of today’s crocodiles colonized the seas during warm phases and became extinct during cold phases, according to a new Anglo-French study which establishes a link between marine crocodilian diversity and the…
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The identity of the long confused snake Elapotinus picteti
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Top left: The snake Elapotinus pictei, Bottom left: a scan of its skull showing the rear fangs. Right a map of its distribution showing is association with rainforest. Adapted from Kucharzewski et al. The snake Elapotinus pictetiJan, 1862 has been an enigma, it was described without locality data. The genus and species were both based…
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A new snake from Trinidad, and its significance to the big picture
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There is no doubt that there are many, many more species of amphibians and reptiles than previously thought. Peter Uetz, maintains the Reptile Database website, and he recently announced that in 2014, the number of known reptile species passed the 10,000 mark – and the year has not yet ended. In an email Uetz wrote the number…
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Vocal communication in Amazon River Turtles
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An adult Giant South American river turtle. The turtle is the largest member of the side-necked turtle family and grows up to nearly three feet in length. Photo credit: C. Ferrara/Wildlife Conservation Society Turtles are well known for their longevity and protective shells, but it turns out these reptiles use sound to stick together and…
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Boid taxonomy revisited
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Two phylogenetic trees from recent papers that included boid snakes. In a new paper Pyron et al. (2014) discuss and alter the taxonomy of boid snakes. The family Boidae previously comprised five subfamilies: Sanziniinae, Charininae, Erycinae, Candoiinae, and Boinae. These subfamilies are distinct both morphologically and biogeographically, with Sanziniinae being restricted to Madagascar; Charininae…
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Reptiles replace dogs as most popular pets
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Reptile shows display many species, often unexpected species. such as this Varanus salvadorii. JCM The following story was published on-line at the Hexam Courant By Joseph Tulip, Wednesday, 13 August 2014 The archetypal English family home wouldn’t be complete without a four-legged friend, a bird in a cage to converse with or perhaps a fluffy…
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Geckos use toe hairs to turn stickiness on and off
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Geckos’ feet are nonsticky by default, but they can activate “stickiness” through application of a small shear force. Photo credit: Image by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, If you’ve ever spent any time watching a gecko, you may have wondered about their uncanny ability to adhere to any surface – including upside down on ceilings. It turns out…
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Sperm storage in the coastal taipan
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Hatching Coastal Taipans. Photo credit: Luke Allen A snake curator studying in Darwin may have solved a puzzle that has confused experts for years. Just how can some female snakes store sperm after mating, sometimes for months, before using it to fertilize their eggs? The rare phenomenon has been recorded in snakes in different parts…
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Suizo Report — Godzilla and her pups
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Howdy Herpers, 08/05/14 Sorry that it has been such a long time since I’ve written all you little people in my life. What with being president of the Tucson Herp Society, running a machine shop, and carrying the full brunt of organizing a radio telemetry study, I don’t even have time to pick my nose any…
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Selective logging damages mammal and amphibian diversity
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This is a tree downed by logging in Madagascar. Photo credit: Zuzana Burivalova The selective logging of trees in otherwise intact tropical forests can take a serious toll on the number of animal species living there. Mammals and amphibians are particularly sensitive to the effects of high-intensity logging, according to researchers in the Cell Press journal Current…
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Amphibians as travlers
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Pseudophilautus poppiae, a microendemic shrub frog from Southern Sri Lanka that only occurs in a few hectares of cloud forest. Photo credit: Alex Pyron There are more than 7,000 known species of amphibians that can be found in nearly every type of ecosystem on six continents. But there have been few attempts to understand exactly…
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Amphibians, Reptiles, & Natural History
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