A new species of the Liolaemus capillitas clade is described. Liolaemus galactostictos sp. nov. differs from other members of its group by a combination of morphological and molecular traits, in particular its black dorsal coloration pattern not found in any other Liolaemus species. Liolaemus galactostictos sp. nov. is only known from its type locality. This new species is found in rocky fields surrounded by grasslands on the top of the Velasco Mountains, a ¨sky island environment¨, in northwestern Argentina. As well as other members of its clade this species seems to be strictly saxicolous, viviparous and feeds on insects. Leer más.

Un total de 36 especies de animales y plantas fueron declaradas extintas, de ellas dos son guatemaltecas, según un informe publicado a finales de diciembre. De acuerdo con la Unión Internacional de Conservación de la Naturaleza (UINC), algunas de las especies declaradas extintas no han sido vistas en los últimos 200 años. Leer más.

19 especies de ranas, sapos y salamandras se sumaron durante el 2020 a la lista de anfibios del país. Esta es una de las cifras más altas que se han registrado en los últimos 30 años y posiciona a Ecuador como el tercer lugar en el mundo con la mayor variedad de estos animales. Leer más.

Bayesian, maximum likelihood and network-based phylogenetic analyses of up to 4,905 ddRADseq-loci (294,300 nucleotides of sequence) supported the distinctiveness of all currently recognised species (Salamandra algira, S. atra, S. corsica, S. infraimmaculata, S. lanzai, and S. salamandra), and all five species for which we have multiple exemplars were confirmed as monophyletic. Within S. salamandra, two main clades can be distinguished: one clade with the Apenninic subspecies S. s. gigliolii nested within the Iberian S. s. bernardezi/fastuosa; the second clade comprising all other Iberian, Central and East European subspecies. Our analyses revealed that some of the currently recognized subspecies of S. salamandra are paraphyletic and may require taxonomic revision, with the Central- and Eastern-European subspecies all being poorly differentiated in the analysed genomic markers. Salamandra s. longirostris – sometimes considered a separate species – was nested within S. salamandra, consistent with its subspecies status. Leer más.

The key to fighting a biological invasion may lie in understanding every variable that can explain its success. The Enemy Release Hypothesis (ERH) states that when an invader arrives to a new environment, the absence of its common enemies (predators, parasites and competitors) facilitates the invasion success. The Horseshoe whip snake (Hemorrhois hippocrepis) has been recently introduced from the Iberian Peninsula to the island of Ibiza, and it is currently threatening the only endemic vertebrate, the Ibiza wall lizard (Podarcis pityusensis). We hypothesized that the snake invasion success is caused by the absence of natural predators, and we checked the ERH by relating the tail breakage rate to predation pressure. Leer más.