Newly discovered / described species 2013

Very beautiful skink, the photos are good in that article. It also says that there are 49 skinks in 13 endemic genera in New Caledonia, which is a lot of diversity (genera number similar to Australia's)! There are 33 skink species in NZ, but only one genus, and NZ is much larger than New Caledonia. I don't know what has driven this diversity, but would like to! Might need to do some reading!

Thanks VC! :D
 
zooboy28 said:
Very beautiful skink, the photos are good in that article. It also says that there are 49 skinks in 13 endemic genera in New Caledonia, which is a lot of diversity (genera number similar to Australia's)! There are 33 skink species in NZ, but only one genus, and NZ is much larger than New Caledonia. I don't know what has driven this diversity, but would like to! Might need to do some reading!

Thanks VC! :D
Click to expand...
it may simply be due to the isolation of New Zealand in comparison to New Caledonia. NZ was potentially only colonised once by skinks, whereas New Caledonia is much closer to more sources such as Australia and other islands and so there would be more chance of different genera establishing founder populations. There was formerly more reptilian diversity in New Caledonia, including a monitor, giant tortoise and a land-dwelling crocodile.
 
Thanks for the second link VC the first one didn't open for me when you first posted it, it's a worrying trend, some thing else may be acting as a suppressant on the salamanders imunity i would think, then they succumb to the new virus
I have 2 fire salamanders so it is a worry for me. I used to keep dart frogs and lost all 10 of my breeding group over a weekend some years back they were fine one day then missing the at the next feed (which i didn't mind so much as the tank was over 5 feet long they could hide away without me realising any thing was wrong) I found them dead the day after, when the fruit flies hadn't been eaten.. I blamed a friend of my partners mother, as she was filling in her pond and we stupidly took the tadpoles and frogs only to find that the next year in our garden dead frogs all over the place. Of course i had used the garden for sweepings etc to feed the frogs I kept so I assume that is how the virus struck. I didn't keep amphibs for a few years after that I was so annoyed and upset with the loss.
 
Thanks Vogelcommando

This is great news, although it hasn't had the same impact as the olinquito did, but a month on I bet a lot of people have forgotten the latter.
 
Two new Batfish-shttp://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2013/f/zt03716p300.pdfpecies from the Indian Ocean being discribed :
 
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