75+ species in 5 square miles

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jonathan
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75+ species in 5 square miles

Post by jonathan »

Some of you have followed our work at Lawachara National Park since it began almost 10 years ago (I've only been involved the last 7 years). One aspect of that work has reached a major milestone: we've published our findings on the herpetological assemblage of the park.

It still amazes me that there are at least 75 species of herps in the mere 5 square miles of land (the abstract to our paper lists 71 confirmed species, but we are aware of at least 3 others that we weren't able to conclusively delineate down to species level as well as one more that appears to be a novel species, and we are certain several more species remain to be found). I believe I once managed either 17 or 18 frog species in a single 24-hour period, without once stepping into a car. There were 36 species of snakes recorded over the course of the study, though it was a remarkable day if you saw more than three of them.

Sixteen of the herp species we found constituted range extensions, 11 of those were new country records for Bangladesh.

Sadly, the park is such a habitat island that we expect quite a number of those species not to hold on in coming years, especially if habitat degredation continues and climate change worsens. We deeply hope that all that remains of the land there can be preserved as well as possible in this incredible place.

The paper can be viewed for free online at either of the following locations:

https://checklist.pensoft.net/article/55673/

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... Bangladesh


Thank you for reading!
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BillMcGighan
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Location: Unicoi, TN

Re: 75+ species in 5 square miles

Post by BillMcGighan »

WOW!.. Just WOW!
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Fieldherper
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Joined: June 11th, 2010, 10:46 am

Re: 75+ species in 5 square miles

Post by Fieldherper »

Very awesome!
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