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Invasive Nerodia in California
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Southern water snakes commonly eat mole salamanders, a group that includes two endangered species in California. (Photo credit: J.D. Willson/University of Arkansas) Water snakes, commonly seen in the lakes, rivers and streams of the eastern United States, are invading California waterways and may pose a threat to native and endangered species in the state, according…
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Kirtland’s snake subject of lawsuit
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Photo by James Harding CHICAGO— The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today over the agency’s failure to grant Endangered Species Act protection to the Kirtland’s snake. The rare snake, now found only in scattered populations in the north-central Midwest, has sharply declined due to the loss of its prairie…
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Snakes mimic extripated species to avoid predators
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Left to right. This scarlet kingsnake could be easily mistaken for its venomous relative (Photo credit David Pfennig) Middle. A venomous coral snake from Florida (Florida Images/Alamy). Right. Scarlet kingsnakes living in the North Carolina Sandhills have fine-tuned their mimicry of coral snakes, even though — or perhaps because — coral snakes have become extinct…
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Convergent snakes
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The southern shovel-nosed snake is a small, desert-dwelling species of Australian elapid snake that feeds almost exclusively on lizard eggs. Photo Credit: Daniel Rabosky. On opposite sides of the globe over millions of years, the snakes of North America and Australia independently evolved similar body types that helped them move and capture prey more efficiently.…
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10 new speices of helmeted turtles
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The “true“ Pelomedusa subrufa remains relatively small, and it is a eritable survivor: In Namibia, it can endure drought periods of up to 6 years by burying itself underground. A. Schleicher Scentists at the Senckenberg Research Institute revealed that the African helmeted terrapin Pelomedusa subrufa actually comprises at least 10 different species. Until now, it…
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Common Asian toad invasive in Madagascar
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Common Indian Toad. Duttaphrynus melanostictus. Front view. Photograph by L. Shyamal The unique wildlife of Madagascar is facing an invasion of toxic toads that could devastate the island’s native species. Snakes feeding on the toads are especially at risk of poisoning, as are a host of other animals unique to the island — such as…
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A new blunt-snouted dyrosaurid from the time of Titanoboa
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An ancient crocodilian has been named after the fictional Balrog creature in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. The ancient 16-foot, 900-pound blunt-snouted dyrosaurid was given the name, Anthracosuchus balrogus, in a new study from The University of Florida. The huge crocodilian was featured in a 2012 Smithsonian Channel documentary about Titanoboa, a massive…
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Intranasal neostigmine reduces mortality in a mouse model of Naja naja envenomtion
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Snakebite is one of the most neglected of all tropical diseases, with nearly 5 million people bitten by snakes each year and fatalities globally up to 30 times higher than that of land mines and comparable to AIDS in some developing countries. It has been estimated that more than 75 percent of snakebite victims who…
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A new mode of reproduction in a new frog
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Nyctibatrachus kumbara Forty different modes of reproduction have been described in frogs, now a 41st mode has been described. The newly described kumbara night frog, Nyctibatrachus kumbara, inhabits stream and river beds traversing the forests of the southern India’s Western Ghats is the only known amphibian to coat its eggs in mud. Kotambylu Vasudeva Gururaja of the…
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Climate change: amphibians & latitude
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The changing climate is impacting organisms worldwide. Perhaps the most obvious change is in the timing of events; Japanese cherries are blossoming earlier than they have for the last 1000 years, some migrating birds arrive at their summer grounds in the northern hemisphere several weeks earlier than they did only 50 years ago, and others…
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The phylogeny of softshell turtles and the giant Shanghai softshell turtle, Rafetus swinhoei
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The softshell turtles of the family Trionychidae have highly derived morphology evolved to adapt the turtles to an almost entirely aquatic environment. These adaptations include a smooth leathery skin covering with a reduced bony shell, a flattened body shape, and heavily webbed toes. Thirty-one species in 13 genera are distributed in Africa, Asia (including New…
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A new horned lizard from Guerrero, Mexico
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Phrynosoma sherbrookei. Photographer unknown The journal Herpetological reports a new species of horned lizard in the genus Phrynosoma from southwest México. Body size, tail length, and scale texture and layout distinguish the new species, Phrynosoma sherbrookei. The new species is named after Wade Sherbrook, who has studied horned lizard behavior, ecology and systematics for many years. There are…
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Four recently described colubroid snakes
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2014 has been predicted to be a big year for new species of reptiles. These four reticently described species support that claim. Siphlophis ayauma sp. nov Siphlophis ayauma sp. nov. was recently described by Sheehy and colleagues (2014) from the Amazonian slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes, in the provinces of Azuay, Tungurahua, and Zamora Chinchipe. This is…
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New Book: Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species, is now available
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Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. 2014. Van Wallach, Kenneth L. Williams, Jeff Boundy. CRC Press, Boca Rattan, FL. 1237 pp. This volume will be required reading for anyone seriously interested in snake systematics and diversity. It contains a checklist to all living and fossil snakes described between 1758 and…
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Amphibians, climate change & habitat loss
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Cascades frogs, found only at high elevations in three states, will face a hard future where trout dominate high mountain lakes and climate change dries up many of the shallower waterways such amphibians have been using. Photo Credit: M Ryan/U of Washington A warming climate, however, will dry up some of the places where amphibians…
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Human modified California kingsnakes now invasive species in the Canary Islands
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The LA Times is carrying the following story. By Louis SahagunApril 27, 2014, 5:05 p.m. An albino variety of California kingsnake popular in the pet trade has infested the Canary Islands, decimating native bird, mammal and lizard species that have had no time to evolve evasive patterns in what was once a stable ecology northwest…
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Butler’s garter snake postpones building a firehouse
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Thamnophis butleri,(Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources) The following story is being carried by the CBC News A tender to build a new Windsor (Ontario, Canada) fire station has been cancelled. A species at risk will delay the construction of the new Fire Station No. 5, proposed on the northeast corner of Daytona Avenue and Northwood…
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Suizo Report — CM16, Magellan
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Howdy Herpers, 04/24/14 On the evening of 4 September, 2013, Typing Boy here was being led around the plot by Dr. Wolfgang Wuster’s students, who were visiting us from the UK. In what was one of many unwise decisions on my part, I handed the receiver off to them without full…
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The black horned leaf frog is composed of multiple cryptic species
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There are 31 horned leaf frogs in genus Proceratophrys which is distributed in Brazil, northeastern Argentina, and Paraguay. The Black Horned Frog, Proceratophrys melanopogon was described based on one adult female from Alto da Serra, Municipality of Paranapiacaba, São Paulo, Brazil in 1926. The species was not accepted as valid by some, but the species…
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Declining Central American Green Turtles
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A 20-year assessment of Nicaragua’s legal, artisanal green sea turtle fishery has uncovered a stark reality: greatly reduced overall catch rates of turtles in what may have become an unsustainable take, according to conservation scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and University of Florida. During the research period, conservation scientists estimated that more than 170,000…
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On the importance of natural history
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Support in developed countries for natural history — the study of the fundamental nature of organisms and how and where they live and interact with their environment — appears to be in steep decline. Yet natural history provides essential knowledge for fields as varied as human health, food security, conservation, land management, and recreation. In…
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Suizo Report — Plot Biscuits
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Howdy Herpers, 04/14/14 We trust that your inbox has been devoid of Suizo Reports lately? The president of the THS can’t imagine what he has been doing with all of his free time………..We should take a moment to explain the numbers that appear in parenthesis after the snake numbers for any of the people on…
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Saint-Girons’ Sea Krait uses nurseries
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Sea kraits (Laticauda) are amphibious snakes widely distributed in the coral reefs of the East Indian and West Pacific Ocean. They forage in the ocean but return to land, usually coralline islets, for resting, shedding skin, an d digesting prey. Their dependence on coastal terrestrial habitats puts them at risk because of increasing human populations…
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Climate change impacts reptiles and birds in the southwest
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Arizona Black Rattlesnake, Crotalus cerberus Awareness and acceptance of climate change is slowly spreading in American society. In a report released by the USGS’ Department of the Interior reports the results of modeling current and future breeding ranges of seven bird and five reptile species in the Southwestern United States with sets of landscape, biotic…
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The monotypic Alligator Snapping Turtle is now three species
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The Alligator Snapping Turtle, Macrochelys temminckii, has gone from being a monotypic species of southeastern North American rivers and the main ingredient in turtle soup to an endangered species that is now three distinct species. This transformation took less than 50 years. Thomas et al. (2014) note previous molecular analyses using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA…
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The Indigo Snake and the Mine
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The Eastern Indigo Snake. Photo credit: US Fish & Wildlife Service By David Fleshler, Sun SentinelApril 6, 2014 The expansion of a rock mine in southwestern Palm Beach County could kill up to a dozen federally protected eastern indigo snakes, the longest native snake in North America, according to a wildlife agency report. The Star…
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Boa & Python Specialist Group report on captive breeding
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31 March 2014 | International news release Indonesia, Malaysia and Viet Nam are the main source of python skins, with China, Thailand and Viet Nam all producing python skins through farming. Photo credit: Daniel Natusch / IUCN The first report under the ‘Python Conservation Partnership’, a collaboration between Kering, the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the Boa and Python…
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Dehydration in sea snakes
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Like camels of the sea, a species of sea snake goes without a drink for months on end, gradually dehydrating, before refueling with freshwater when rain falls, new research suggests. “Perhaps six or seven months of the year, these snakes are living thirsty,” said Coleman Sheehy III, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Florida,…
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Homing & navigation in the invasive Python bivittatus
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Evidence for homing behavior and navigation in snakes has been around for awhile see Stickel and Cope (1947) and such behavior should not be at all surprising in Python bivittatus, so keep this in mind while reading the popular press release below. By Mickie Andersson, University of Florida News Center GAINESVILLE — If you pick…
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Rukwanyoka holmani; the oldest advanced venomous snake
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A vertebrae of the oldest fossil venomous snake Rukwanyoka holmani in Africa. Photo Credit: Ohio University. Ohio University scientists have found the oldest definitive fossil evidence of modern, venomous snakes in Africa, according to a new study published March 19 in the journal PLOS ONE. The newly discovered fossils demonstrate that elapid snakes—such as cobras, kraits and…
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Jurassic sites link fossil communities of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals
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The fossil salamander Chunerpeton shows the preserved skeleton, the skin, and external gills. Photo Credit: Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Over the last two decades, huge numbers of fossils have been collected from the western Liaoning Province and adjacent parts of northeastern China, including exceptionally preserved feathered dinosaurs, early birds, and mammals. Most of these specimens…
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Interspecific aggression in garter snakes
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The aquatic garter snake at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, Oakland, CA. Photo credit: Sarah Stierch. Aggressive behavior is used in many vertebrate communities to gain control of resources, snakes, however, have been thought the exception. Some snake species use male-to-male combat for access to females, but this is intraspecies behavior. Food partitioning usually thought to…
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Herpetofauna of the the Tay Yen Tu Nature Reserve, Vietnam
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Rhynchophis boulengeri , one of the colubrids present at Tay Yen Tu. JCM The Tay Yen Tu Nature Reserve is located in Bac Giang Province, about 100 km northeast of Hanoi, Vietnam and is situated in the western side of theYen Tu massif, which is the largest granitic formation in northeastern Vietnam. The main habitat…
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Risk assessment for Burmese pythons in Everglades National Park
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A large Burmese python, weighing 162 pounds and more than 15 feet long at the time of its capture in 2009. Caught alive in the Everglades, it had eaten an American alligator that measured about 6 feet in length. University of Florida researchers in the photo: Michael Rochford is holding the python’s head, and Alex Wolf…
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A new systematic arrangement for skinks
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One-quarter of all lizards are skinks, and they have been traditionally placed in the single family Scincidae. 1,579 species of skinks are known and they compose the largest group of saurians. Other large lizard families, such as Gekkonidae and Iguanidae have been partitioned into multiple families , based mainly on evidence from molecular phylogenies. Subfamilies…
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The amphibians and reptiles of Mindo, an Ecuadorian cloud forest ecosystem
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If you have not yet found the Tropical Herping web site, I would encourage you to visit it. Alejandro Arteaga and colleagues have done an outstanding job building this elegant and information filled website. What follows is a short article from the site and some photography. By Alejandro Arteaga, Lucas Bustamante and Juan Guayasamin After four…
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Tree climbing crocs
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An American alligator perches in a tree in the Pearl River Delta, Mississippi. Photo credit: Kristine Gingras, courtesy of University of Tennessee Two species of paleo crocodilians (Mekosuchus inexpectatus and Trilophosuchus rackhami) have been hypothesized to have been arboreal, they share a small body size and have a lighter build than most other crocs and…
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Global sea turtle harvest exceeds 42,000 per year
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A new study has found that 42 countries or territories around the world permit the harvest of marine turtles — and estimates that more than 42,000 turtles are caught each year by these fisheries. The research, carried out by Blue Ventures Conservation and staff at the University of Exeter’s Centre for Ecology and Conservation, is…
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Dusky sea snake (Aipysurus fuscus) may disappear into a hybridization swarm
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A University of Adelaide-led project has found that the endangered dusky sea snake (Aipysurus fuscus) is even more at risk of extinction than thought because of surprising cross-species hybridization. This follows a pattern of unexplained drastically declining populations of sea snakes in the reefs of the Timor Sea in north-west Australia over the past 15…
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Suizo Report–CM12 “Jerry” and CM17
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02/17/13 Howdy Suizo List, It has been so long since I’ve done a Suizo Report that I’ve forgotten how it’s done. But we’ll give it our best shot. Probably less than half of this list will ever remember the days before digital photography. And if you DO remember, when was the last time you had…
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The Odontobatrachidae, a new family of West African Frogs
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Berlin scientists discover new frog family in West AfricaDr. Gesine Steiner Pressestelle, Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung To the left. Top. Odontobatrachus natator: one species of the new frog family. Photo: Mark-Oliver Rödel. Bottom. Scan of the skull: the unusual teeth are one unique anatomic character of the new frog family Scan: Michael…
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Two fossorial snakes and the prairie chicken vs developers in Kansas
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Snakes and prairie chickens pit development against species preservation in KansasFebruary 9BY BRAD COOPERThe Kansas City Star The red-bellied snake, Storeria occipitomaculata TOPEKA — Barely a half-foot long without a drop of venom, the redbelly snake hardly seems a threat. Unless you’re a developer or public official in Johnson County. Listed by Kansas as a threatened…
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A new record size for south Florida Pythons
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News outlets are reporting a large Burmese python discovered in the Florida Everglades is the largest found to date in southern Florida. The past record, for the longest python found in the area 17 ft, 7 inches. It was found in May 2012 and was a gravid female containing 87 eggs, and weighed about 164…
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The Skink and the Crab – life in a Western Australian Salt Marsh
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Photo credit R. Lloyd. The striped slinks of the genus Ctenotus are the most diverse lizard clade of Australia with more than 100 known species. The Airlie Island Ctenotus is a dark olive-grey to light brown skink with a 64–69 mm body. Until recently it was known from the island and two mainland location. The…
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Cane toads adapt rapidly to cool temperatures and are invading high elevation in New South Wales
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A forthcoming paper in Function Ecology by McCann et al. (2014) rerports the cane toad, Rhinella marina has now reached areas much colder than most of its native range in tropical America. In northeastern New South Wales, cane toads have been recorded up to 1100 m above sea level (asl). The authors monitored the toad over the…
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Leatherback movements associated with food
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Previous studies of leatherback turtles have analyzed surface movement patterns using only surface covariates. Since turtles and other marine predators spend the vast majority of their time diving underwater, an analysis of movement patterns at depth should yield insight into what drives their movements. Photo credit DivingSeaSafari In a new paper Scihick and colleagues (2013)…
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Capitol Hill wants to regulate snakes
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The following story by Michael Bastasch from is from the Daily Caller Ever wanted to have a pet snake? Well, that could get a little harder soon. It looks like the snakes on Capitol Hill are teaming up with animal rights activists to make it harder for people to keep certain types of snakes as…
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A new on-line herp journal from CNAH
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The Center for North American Herpetology (CNAH) has announce the launch of their new journal – The Journal of North American Herpetology. The Journal of North American Herpetology (JNAH) (ISSN 2333-0694) provides an open access on-line venue with the use of all modern digital technologies for peer-reviewed contributions of all aspects of North American Herpetology…
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Ripples in the water and the male tungara frog
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Ripples continue for several seconds after a male tungara frog has stopped calling. Photo credit: Ryan Taylor. As the male túngara frog serenades female frogs from a pond, he creates watery ripples that make him easier to target by rivals and predators such as bats, according to researchers from The University of Texas at Austin,…
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Schouteden’s sun snake, Helophis schoutedeni a forgotten aquatic snake from central Africa
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Heliophis schoutedeni. Photo credit Vaclay Gvozdik. The Schouteden’s sun snake Helophis schoutedeni is the sole member of the genus, and was originally described by the Belgian herpetologist Gaston-François de Witte in 1922 as Pelophis schoutedeni. Twenty years later, the new generic name Helophis was established by de Witte and Laurent because the generic name Pelophis…
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