Reptile & Amphibian News

Queen’s University Belfast is appealing for help from the public in looking at ways to detect and stop the spread of marine aliens. (2008-06-17)

Cholera is a major killer and since the first pandemic in the early 19th century it has claimed millions of lives. According to Amit Lerner from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, the lethal infection is harboured by an equally infamous insect: chironomids (midges). (2008-10-31)

New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history, when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land. (2008-06-26)

The western Amazon, home to the most biodiverse and intact rainforest left on Earth, may soon be covered with oil rigs and pipelines. (2008-08-13)

For the first time, researchers have shown that the pre-hatching calls of baby Nile crocodiles actually mean something to their siblings and to their mothers. (2008-06-24)

Night-traveling migratory moths may hitch a ride on the wind, but a new study in the October 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, confirms that they are anything but drifters. (2008-10-14)

Will climate change exceed life’s ability to respond? Biodiversity in a Warmer World, published in the Oct. 10, 2008 issue of the journal, Science, illustrates that cross-disciplinary research fostered by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama clearly informs this urgent debate. (2008-10-10)

A rat thought extinct for 11 million years and a hot-pink, cyanide-producing dragon millipede are among a thousand new species discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in the last decade, according to a new report by World Wildlife Fund. First Contact in the Greater Mekong reports that 1,068 species were discovered or newly identified by science between 1997 and 2007 — which averages two new species a week.

Scientists from the Universities of Bath and Exeter have developed a rapid new way of checking for toxic genes in disease-causing bacteria which infect insects and humans. (2008-10-09)

Researchers from the University of Hawaii, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, National Marine Fisheries Service and Projecto Meros do Brazil discovered a new species of fish-a grouper that reaches more than six feet in length and can weigh nearly 1,000 pounds. This newly discovered species can be found roaming the tropical reefs of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. (2008-08-22)