Cfreptiles & Amphibians
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WWW.IRCF.ORG TABLE OF CONTENTS IRCF REPTILES &IRCF AMPHIBIANS REPTILES • VOL &15, AMPHIBIANS NO 4 • DEC 2008 • 189 27(2):228–230 • AUG 2020 IRCF REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS CONSERVATION AND NATURAL HISTORY TABLE OF CONTENTS FEATURE ARTICLES . ChasingPredation Bullsnakes (Pituophis catenifer sayi )on in Wisconsin: an Egg Mass of the On the Road to Understanding the Ecology and Conservation of the Midwest’s Giant Serpent ...................... Joshua M. Kapfer 190 Terai. The Shared History Treefrog, of Treeboas (Corallus grenadensis) andPolypedates Humans on Grenada: taeniatus A Hypothetical Excursion ............................................................................................................................Robert W. Henderson 198 (Anura:RESEARCH Rhacophoridae), ARTICLES by Flesh Fly Larvae . The Texas Horned Lizard in Central and Western Texas ....................... Emily Henry, Jason Brewer, Krista Mougey, and Gad Perry 204 . The Knight Anole (Anolis equestris) in Florida .............................................(Diptera:Brian J. Camposano, Kenneth Sarcophagidae) L. Krysko, Kevin M. Enge, Ellen M. Donlan, and Michael Granatosky 212 CONSERVATION ALERT Bitupan Boruah and Abhijit Das . World’s Mammals in Crisis ............................................................................................................................................................. 220 . MoreWildlife Than Mammals Institute ............................................................................................................................... of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun, Uttarakhand-248001, India ([email protected])....................................... 223 . The “Dow Jones Index” of Biodiversity ........................................................................................................................................... 225 HUSBANDRY . Captive Care of the Central Netted Dragon ....................................................................................................... Shannon Plummer 226 he terrestrial eggs of anurans are vulnerable to attack an incidence of predation by dipteran larvae on an egg mass Tby predators suchPROFILE as fly larvae (Bokermann 1957; Villa of the Terai Treefrog (Polypedates taeniatus). 1977, 1980; Villa and. Kraig Townsend Adler: A Lifetime 1983; Promoting Davis Herpetology and ................................................................................................ Disney Among the foam nesting Michael L. rhacophorids,Treglia 234 Polypedates tae- 2003). Dipteran larvaeCOMMENTARY in the families Psychodidae (Villa niatus (Fig. 1) is restricted to the fragmented grassland patches 1980), Drosophilidae,. The EphydridaeTurtles Have Been Watching (Menin Me ........................................................................................................................ and Giaretta of India and Nepal (Anders Eric et Gangloff al. 1998;238 Ahmed and Dutta 2003), Phoridae (VoneshBOOK REVIEW 2000), Psychodidae, Syrphidae 2000; Schleich and Kästle 2002; Das et al. 2012). Deuti et al. (Villa et al. 1982; Davis. Threatened and Amphibians Disney of the 2003), World edited Tabanidae by S.N. Stuart, M. Hoffmann,(2018) J.S.recently Chanson, described N.A. Cox, acoustic behavior and larval devel- (Mohanty-Hejmadi andR. Dutta Berridge, P.1988), Ramani, andCalliphoridae B.E. Young .............................................................................................................. (Yorke opment of the species in West Robert Bengal. Powell 243 1983; Lin et al. 2000; Lue and Lin 2000; Karraker 2013), During August 2018, we observed a breeding congrega- CONSERVATION RESEARCH REPORTS: Summaries of Published Conservation Research Reports ................................. 245 and Sarcophagidae (FiladelfoNATURAL HISTORYet al. 2013) RESEARCH are known REPORTS to: Summariesfeed of Publishedtion of Reports P. taeniatus on Natural History in a................................. patch of Narrowleaf 247 Cattail (Typha on anuran eggs. However, NEWBRIEFS to the ............................................................................................................................... best of our knowledge, the angustifolia) at .......................................................Bidurkuti (29.28301ºN, 248 78.10165ºE; 208 m EDITORIAL INFORMATION ..................................................................................................................................................... 251 only report of predation FOCUS on ON egg CONSERVATION masses of Indian: A Project anurans You Can Supportis ...............................................................................................asl), Bijnor District, Uttar Pradesh, 252India. Males perched at by Mohanty-Hejmadi and Dutta (1988). Herein we report heights ranging from the ground to approximately 1.5 m and Front Cover. Shannon Plummer. Back Cover. Michael Kern Totat et velleseque audant mo Totat et velleseque audant mo estibus inveliquo velique rerchil estibus inveliquo velique rerchil erspienimus, quos accullabo. Ilibus erspienimus, quos accullabo. Ilibus aut dolor apicto invere pe dolum aut dolor apicto invere pe dolum 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. Terai Treefrogs (Polypedates taeniatus): Calling male on a perch (A) and an amplecting pair constructing a foam nest on the ground (B). Photographs by Bitupan Boruah. Copyright © 2020. Bitupan Boruah. All rights reserved. 228 IRCF Reptiles & Amphibians ISSN 1098-6324 BORUAH AND DAS IRCF REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS • 27(2):228–230 • AUG 2020 Acknowledgements We are thankful to the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), Government of India, for financial support; the Director and Dean, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, for constant support; and the Forest Department of Uttar Pradesh for permission to carry out this study. We thank Arkojyoti Sarkar for help during fieldwork. Literature Cited Ahmed, M.F. and S.K. Dutta. 2000. First record of Polypedates taeniatus (Boulenger, 1906) from Assam, north-eastern India. Hamadryad 25: 49–50. Anders, C.C., A. Deiner, and H.H. Schleich. 1998. First record of Polypedates tae- niatus (Boulenger 1906) from Nepal (Amphibia, Anura: Rhacophoridae), pp. 73–86. In: H.H. Schleich, and W. Kastle (eds.), Contribution to the Herpetology of South Asia (Nepal, India). Veroff Fuhlrott Museum, Wuppertal, Germany. Bokermann, W.C. 1957. Frog eggs parasitized by dipterous larvae. Herpetologica 13: 231–232. da Silva, I.C.O., S.S. de Carvalho, K. Ceron, D.J. Santana, and L.E.R. Tavares. Fig. 2. Ventral (A) and lateral (B) views of flesh fly larvae (Diptera: 2019. A case of dipteran parasitism in Trachycephalus typhonius (Anura: Sarcophagidae) that had been feeding on the eggs of Terai Treefrogs Hylidae), with a summary of myiasis parasitism in anurans. Phyllomedusa 18: (Polypedates taeniatus). Scale bars = 1 mm. Photographs by Abhijit Das. 283–292. Das, A., D. Basu, L. Converse, and S.R.C. Choudhury. 2012. Herpetofauna of Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary, Uttar Pradesh, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 4: 2553–2568. started calling after 1830 h. Amplecting pairs constructed Davis, R.A. and R.H.L. Disney. 2003. Natural history and description of Aphiura breviceps Schmitz, a scuttle fly (Diptera: Phoridae) whose larvae prey on foam nests at the bases of cattails or under grass near tempo- the eggs of frogs (Anura: Myobatrachidae) in Western Australia. Austral rary puddles, probably to minimize the risk of desiccation if Entomology 42: 18–21. exposed to direct sunlight. Deuti, K., B.H.C.K. Murthy, and P.G.S. Sethy. 2018. A new distribution record of Polypedates taeniatus (Amphibia: Anura: Rhacophoridae) with notes on its On 20 August 2018, we found some cream-colored lar- breeding call and post-embryonic developmental stages. Records of Zoological vae in a fresh foam nest that had been constructed during the Survey of India 118: 298–306. previous night. Those larvae, 4.6–10.0 mm (mean = 6.2 ± 2.6 Filadelfo, T., B.Q. Carvalho-Zimbres, P.D. Dantas, C.A. Mello-Patiu, and R. Albuquerque-Brandão. 2013. Egg clutches and predation of Phyllomedusa mm, n = 4) in length, had consumed the entire egg mass. We azurea (Anura, Hylidae) nests in a temporary pond in central Brazil. identified the predatory larvae (Fig. 2) as flesh flies (Diptera: Herpetology Notes 6: 485–488. Sarcophagidae) using keys in Gómez-Hoyos et al. (2012), Gómez-Hoyos, D.A., T. Suárez-Joaqui, and O.H. Marín-Gómez. 2012. Flesh fly myiasis (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) in Pristimantis thectopternus (Anura: Szpila et al. (2015), and da Silva et al. (2019). Sarcophagid Strabomantidae) from Colombia. Herpetology Notes 5: 27–29. larvae can be differentiated from the larvae of flies in other Karraker, N.E. 2013. Shading mediates the interaction between an amphibian and dipteran families by the position of the posterior spiracles a predatory fly. Herpetologica 69: 257–264. Kusano, T., A. Sakai, and S. Hatanaka. 2005. Natural egg mortality and clutch size in a concave spiracular field (da Silva et al. 2019). We were of the Japanese treefrog, Rhacophorus arboreus (Amphibia: Rhacophoridae). unable to identify these larvae to a lower taxonomic level as Current Herpetology 24: 79–84. differentiation is possible only with adults (Mello-Patiu and Lin, S., C. Kuo, and K. Lue. 2000. Oviposition behavior and host selection of the frogfly,