HTTPS://JOURNALS.KU.EDU/REPTILESANDAMPHIBIANSTABLE OF CONTENTS IRCF REPTILES & AMPHIBIANSREPTILES • VOL & AMPHIBIANS15, NO 4 • DEC 2008 • 28(2):189 343–344 • AUG 2021

IRCF REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS CONSERVATION AND NATURAL HISTORY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A BifurcatedFEATURE ARTICLES Tail in a Common House Gecko . Chasing Bullsnakes (Pituophis catenifer sayi) in Wisconsin: On( theHemidactylus Road to Understanding the Ecology and Conservation frenatus of the Midwest’s Giant Serpent) from ...... Joshua the M. Kapfer 190 . The Shared History of Treeboas (Corallus grenadensis) and Humans on Grenada: MoyarA Hypothetical ExcursionRiver ...... Valley, Tamil Nadu,Robert W. Henderson India 198 RESEARCH ARTICLES . The Texas Horned Lizard in CentralSreedharan and Western Nair Texas Vishnu ...... and Emily Chinnasamy Henry, Jason Brewer,Ramesh Krista Mougey, and Gad Perry 204 . The Knight Anole (Anolis equestris) in Florida ...... Wildlife Institute of India,Brian Chandrabani, J. Camposano, KennethDehradun-248002, L. Krysko, Kevin Uttarakhand, M. Enge, Ellen India M. Donlan, ([email protected]) and Michael Granatosky 212

CONSERVATION ALERT . World’s Mammals in Crisis ...... 220 he Common. HouseMore Than GeckoMammals ...... (Hemidactylus frenatus), it evaded capture and...... we were unable to223 measure it or collect . The “Dow Jones Index” of Biodiversity ...... 225 Twhich is native to tropical Asia and the Indo-Pacific any other data. (Case et al. 1994),HUSBANDRY is considered the most widely distributed Tail bifurcation in Common House Geckos has been gecko in the world. dueCaptive to Care a ofplethora the Central ofNetted accidental Dragon ...... introduc- reported from Bangladesh Shannon (Khan Plummer 2004; 226 Maria and Al-Razi tions in tropical PROFILEand subtropical habitats (Rödder et al. 2008; 2018; Khandakar and Sultana 2020) and from introduced Carranza and Arnold. Kraig 2006 Adler:; ALei Lifetime and Promoting Booth Herpetology 2014)...... populations in Hawai’i Michael (Chan L. Treglia et al.234 1984), Honduras Bifurcated tails are abnormalities that typically result (Heyborne and Mahan 2017), and Mexico (García-Vinalay COMMENTARY from incomplete caudectomy, which may occur during escape et al. 2017). This report documents the first known case of . The Turtles Have Been Watching Me ...... Eric Gangloff 238 from a predator (Arnold 1988; Meyer et al. 2002) resulting this condition in an individual from Tamil Nadu, India. in sufficient damageBOOK to REVIEWtrigger new tail growth (Gandla and Srinivasulu 2015), .orThreatened from spinal Amphibians cord of theissues World or edited as an by S.N.effect Stuart, of M. Hoffmann, J.S. Chanson, N.A.Acknowledgements Cox, R. Berridge, P. Ramani, and B.E. Young ...... Robert Powell 243 mutation (Brindley 1894). Bifurcation of the tail is relatively Research grant DST-SERB (EMR/2016/003963) by the rare in nature (Kornilev CONSERVATION et al. 2018) RESEARCH and may REPORTS: affect Summariesan ani- of PublishedGovernment Conservation Research of India Reports provided ...... funding 245 for the fieldwork mal’s fitness adversely NATURAL as the HISTORY tail plays RESEARCH a vital role REPORTS in locomo: Summaries- of Publishedduring Reports which on Natural we madeHistory ...... the observation 247 described above. tion, and can affect NEWBRIEFS such activities ...... as mating, foraging, and the That research was...... approved by the Ministry 248 of Environment,  EDITORIAL INFORMATION ...... 251 ability to escape fromFOCUS predators ON CONSERVATION (Passos et al.: A2014). Project You Can Support ...... Forests and Climate Change, Government 252 of India, and the At 2107 h on 27 March 2019, we observed a subadult H. Tamil Nadu Forest Department (No.WL5(A)/17699/2017; frenatus in Thengumrahada Village (76.9094°N, 11.5552°E) Permit No. 82/2017). We thank the Principal Chief located between the Mudumalai and Sathyamangalam Tiger Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden, Tamil Reserves in the Moyar River Valley,Front Tamil Cover. Nadu,Shannon Plummer.India. The Nadu,Back Field Cover. MichaelDirectors, Kern Chief Conservator of Forests, tail had a Y-shaped bifurcation, withTotat etboth velleseque branches audant mo appear - andTotat District et velleseque Forest audant Officersmo of the Sathyamangalam and ing to be regenerated (Fig. 1). Theestibus cause inveliquo of the velique bifurcation rerchil is Mudumalaiestibus inveliquo Tiger velique Reservesrerchil for granting permission to sur- erspienimus, quos accullabo. Ilibus erspienimus, quos accullabo. Ilibus unknown. Although we were ableaut to dolor photograph apicto invere pethe dolum lizard, veyaut dolorthe apictoarea invereas well pe dolum as timely help during fieldwork. We also fugiatis maionsequat eumque fugiatis maionsequat eumque moditia erere nonsedis ma sectiatur moditia erere nonsedis ma sectia- ma derrovitae voluptam, as quos tur ma derrovitae voluptam, as accullabo.

Fig. 1. A Common House Gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus) with a bifurcated tail in a human habitation within protected areas of the Moyar River Valley, Tamil Nadu, India. Photograph by Sreedharan Nair Vishnu.

Copyright is held by the authors. Articles in R&A are made available under a 343 Reptiles & Amphibians ISSN 2332-4961 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. VISHNU AND RAMESH REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS • 28(2): 343–344 • AUG 2021 thank the Dean and the Director of the Wildlife Institute of García-Vinalay, A. 2017. Hemidactylus frenatus (Duméril and Bibron, 1836). Tail bifurcation. Mesoamerican Herpetology 4: 635–637. India, Dehradun, for their support and encouragement. Heyborne, W.H. and A. Mahan. 2017. Hemidactylus frenatus (Common House Gecko). Tail bifurcation. Herpetological Review 48: 437–438. Literature Cited Khan, M.A.R. 2004. Checklist of herpetofauna of Bangladesh. Cobra 75: 1–31. Arnold, E.N. 1988. Caudal autotomy as a defense, pp. 235–273. In: C. Gans and Khandakar, N. and I. Sultana. 2020. A tale of two tails: Tail bifurcation in the R.B. Huey (eds.), Biology of the Reptilia. Volume 16, Ecology B. Defense and Common House Gecko, Hemidactylus frenatus (Duméril and Bibron 1836), Life History. Alan R. Liss, Inc., New York, New York, USA. in Bangladesh. Reptiles & Amphibians 27: 255–256. Brindley, H.H. 1894. On a specimen of Hemidactylus gleadovii Murray with a bifid Kornilev, Y.V., G. Popgeorgiev, E. Vacheva, and N. Tzankov. 2018. First records renewed tail. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 9: 30–33. of melanism (including in tail bifurcation) of lacertid lizards (Reptilia: Carranza, S. and E.N. Arnold. 2006. Systematics, biogeography, and evolution of Lacertidae) in Bulgaria. North-Western Journal of Zoology 14: 142–144. Hemidactylus geckos (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) elucidated using mitochondrial Lei, J. and D.T. Booth. 2014. Temperature, field activity and post-feeding metabolic DNA sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 38: 531–545. https:// response in the Asian house gecko, Hemidactylus frenatus. Journal of Thermal doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2005.07.012. Biology 45: 175–180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.therbio.2014.09.006. Case, T.J., D.T. Bolger, and K. Petren.1994. Invasions and competitive displace- Maria, M. and H. Al-Razi. 2018. Observation of tail bifurcation in Hemidactylus ment among house geckos in the tropical Pacific. Ecology 75: 464–477. frenatus (Schlegel, 1836). Herpetology Notes 11: 953–954. https://doi.org/10.2307/1939550. Meyer, V., M.R. Preest, and S.M. Lochetto. 2002. Physiology of original and regen- Chan, J.G., L.L. Young., P.R.K. Chang., C.M. Shero, and C. Watts. 1984. erated lizard tails. Herpetologica 58: 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1655/0018- Morphological anomalies of two geckos, Hemidactylus frenatus and 0831(2002)058[0075:POOARL]2.0.CO;2. Lepidodactylus lugubris, and the toad, Bufo marinus, on the Island of Hawaii, Passos, D.C., L.T. Pinheiro, C.A.B. Galdino, and C.F.D. Rocha. 2014. Tropidurus pp. 41–50. In: C.W. Smith (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth Conference in Natural semitaeniatus (Calango de Lagedo). Tail bifurcation. Herpetological Review 45: Sciences. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, 5–7 June 1984. Department of 138. Botany, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Rödder, D., M. Solé, and W. Böhme. 2008. Predicting the potential distributions Gandla, C. and C. Srinivasulu. 2015. A two‐tailed Indian giant leaf‐toed gecko of two alien invasive House geckos (Gekkonidae: Hemidactylus frenatus, (Hemidactylus giganteus). Taprobanica 7: 263–265. Hemidactylus mabouia). North-Western Journal of Zoology 4: 236–246.

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