Fifty two new reptile and frog species discovered and named in scientific papers published this month.

Media release August 2016.

An ongoing audit of the planet’s vertebrates has seen papers published this month that named over 50 species of reptile and frog.
Included were a Rattlesnake from the United States, the first rattlesnake species from the USA formally named in decades, as well as two viper species from Europe. Other species included a very deadly snake from the rainforests of far north Queensland in Australia, ten species of Pacific Boa and over ten lizards from across Australia.
The species were detected by a combination of molecular, morphological and distributional evidence and the number of newly named reptile species (46) is the largest single group named in one journal and at one time since 1985.
Published in Australasian Journal of Herpetology, the papers by Australian scientist Raymond Hoser are the most recent of over 100 such earlier papers that name hundreds of species and genera of reptile from most parts of the planet, including Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Caribbean, Madagascar, New Guinea and Australia.
This week Hoser said ‘I am aware of several hundred as yet unnamed species of reptile and a similar number of unnamed frogs, and no doubt there are more … the significance of all this is that the biodiversity of the planet has been significantly underestimated and as human populations increase, so too does the pressure on populations of other species.”
Some of the snakes formally named by Hoser this month come from Pacific Islands, where they are now regarded as critically endangered due to the introduction of pests such as Mongoose.
Hoser says “Until species are formally identified and named, no government is able to institute proper conservation measures for them. It is as simple as that!” Raymond Hoser, better known as the snake man, has been a conservation icon for decades.
He has discovered and named more species of snake than anyone born in the past 150 years. He has also named more species and genera of reptile than anyone else alive, and by a significant margin. He put wildlife conservation on the political agenda in the 1980’s and 1990’s worldwide when he published numerous definitive books on endangered animals as well as reptiles and frogs. These books formed the basis of TV documentaries in the decades that followed.
Ignoring the publications of Hoser this week, other scientists are formally naming new species of reptile at the rate of about 200 per year from almost all ice-free parts of the world, indicating a huge amount of recently discovered biodiversity. Hoser named about 30 species last year and a similar number the year before.
As seen in the papers by Hoser this week, these newly discovered species do not just include tiny innocuous species, but even large impressive species, living under everyone’s noses, such as the newly named Rattlesnake from California, giant skinks from the Solomon Islands, European vipers and a spectacular dragon lizard from north Queensland!
To get access to the most recent papers in Australasian Journal of Herpetology to get the full detail of the recently named species and genera, see the link below.
Details can be found here: http://www.herp.net
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