Pradhan, Aditya

Yonle, Rujas

English

The University of Kansas: Journals@KU

Notes on Asian Glass Lizards, Dopasia gracilis (Gray 1845), in Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya, India

Biodiversity Informatics

IRCF REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS  •  VOL15, NO 4  •  DEC 2008 189TABLE OF CONTENTST A B L E  O F  C O N T E N T SF E A T U R E  A R T I C L E S Chasing Bullsnakes (Pituophis catenifer sayi) in Wisconsin: On the Road to Understanding the Ecology and Conservation of the Midwest’s Giant Serpent ...................... Joshua M. Kapfer 190 The Shared History of Treeboas (Corallus grenadensis) and Humans on Grenada: A Hypothetical Excursion ............................................................................................................................Robert W. Henderson 198R E S E A R C H  A R T I C L E S 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  .............................................Brian J. Camposano, Kenneth L. Krysko, Kevin M. Enge, Ellen M. Donlan, and Michael Granatosky 212C O N S E R V A T I O N  A L E R T World’s Mammals in Crisis  .............................................................................................................................................................   220 More Than Mammals  ......................................................................................................................................................................   223 The “Dow Jones Index” of Biodiversity  ...........................................................................................................................................   225H U S B A N D R Y Captive Care of the Central Netted Dragon  ....................................................................................................... Shannon Plummer 226P R O F I L E Kraig Adler: A Lifetime Promoting Herpetology  ................................................................................................ Michael L. Treglia 234C O M M E N T A R Y The Turtles Have Been Watching Me  ........................................................................................................................ Eric Gangloff 238B O O K  R E V I E W Threatened Amphibians of the World edited by S.N. Stuart, M. Hoffmann, J.S. Chanson, N.A. Cox, R. Berridge, P. Ramani, and B.E. Young  ..............................................................................................................  Robert Powell 243 CONSERVATION RESEARCH REPORTS:   Summaries of Published Conservation Research Reports  .................................  245 NATURAL HISTORY RESEARCH REPORTS:   Summaries of Published Reports on Natural History .................................  247 NEWBRIEFS  ......................................................................................................................................................................................  248 EDITORIAL INFORMATION  .....................................................................................................................................................  251 FOCUS ON CONSERVATION:   A Project You Can Support  ...............................................................................................  252Front Cover. Shannon Plummer.Totat et velleseque audant mo estibus inveliquo velique rerchil erspienimus, quos accullabo. Ilibus aut dolor apicto invere pe dolum fugiatis maionsequat eumque moditia erere nonsedis ma sectiatur ma derrovitae voluptam, as quos accullabo.Back Cover. Michael KernTotat et velleseque audant mo estibus inveliquo velique rerchil erspienimus, quos accullabo. Ilibus aut dolor apicto invere pe dolum fugiatis maionsequat eumque moditia erere nonsedis ma sectia-tur ma derrovitae voluptam, asIRCFREPTILES & AMPHIBIANSC O N S E R V AT I O N  A N D  N AT U R A L  H I S T O R Y REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS  •  27(3):508–511  •  DEC 2020508HTTPS://JOURNALS.KU.EDU/REPTILESANDAMPHIBIANSReptiles & Amphibians ISSN 1098-6324Copyright is held by the authors. Articles in R&A are made available under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.Although the Eastern Himalaya is a global biodiversity hotspot (Mittermeier et al. 2011) and a number of 19th-century works (Gray 1845, 1853; Anderson 1871; Boulenger 1885) documented reptilian diversity in the region, few recent studies (Chettri and Bhupathy 2007; Chettri et al. 2010, 2011) have addressed the reptilian fauna of Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya. The area is home to 100 species (Chettri and Bhupathy 2007; Pan et al. 2013; Pradhan et al. 2020), Notes on Asian Glass Lizards,  Dopasia gracilis (Gray 1845),  in Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya, IndiaAditya Pradhan1 and Rujas Yonle21Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Regional Office Eastern Himalaya-Northeast India,  NH 10 Tadong, Gangtok-737102, Sikkim, India (adityazoo@live.com)2Department of Zoology, Environmental Biology Laboratory, Darjeeling Government College, Darjeeling 734101, West Bengal, India  (rujasyonle@gmail.com [corresponding author])Fig. 1. Map showing historical records of Dopasia gracilis across the Indo-Chinese sub-region, accompanied by the current sighting records along an eleva-tion gradient.PRADHAN AND YONLE  REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS  •  27(3):508–511  •  DEC 2020509including the recently documented Himalayan Lancehead (Protobothrops himalayanus) and Assam Leaf Turtle (Cyclemys gemeli), but also including some species that have not been encountered in recent years. One of the latter is the Asian Glass Lizard (Dopasia gracilis). Dopasia gracilis (Gray 1853) is distributed from northern India through the Indo-Chinese Peninsula south to Indonesia (Nguyen et al. 2016) (Fig. 1) primarily at elevations of 3,000–5,000 ft (~900–1,500 m), with a maximum elevation of 8,000 ft (= 2,438 m) near Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, India (Smith 1935). This species has been recorded from many parts of the eastern Himalayas of Assam and Himachal Pradesh (Smith 1935; Tikader 1967). In recent years, however, it has been reported only from Mizoram (Lalremsanga et al. 2010) and occasionally photographed by nature enthusiasts in Arunachal Pradesh (Uetz et al. 2020). In Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya, records date to Boulenger (1885) and Gammie (1928), with subsequent reports of its occurrence in the region (Ahmed and Dasgupta 1992; Jha and Thapa 2002; Chettri and Bhupathy 2007) based on historical records or museum specimens. Moreover, recent herpetological studies in Sikkim Himalayas (Chettri et al. 2011) failed to document this species and sur-veys are yet to be conducted in the Darjeeling Hills. Also, although this species has been previously described and reported from elevations above 1,000 m asl in Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya (Anderson 1871; Boulenger 1885; Gammie 1928), no precise localities were listed. Herein, we present the first detailed locality and elevational records for the area. We conducted a Visual Encounter Survey (VES) (Chettri et al. 2010) supplemented by opportunistic sampling to doc-ument the reptilian fauna (not presented in this paper) in a human-modified ecosystem at elevations of 1,550–1,600 m asl in the Darjeeling Hills of northern India (27.04°N, 88.36°E) (Fig. 1). The area is characterized by abandoned farms and private forests and borders a reserve forest to the west, which is continuous with the Senchal Wildlife Sanctuary. The region receives heavy rainfall during the mon-soon (May–August) and occasional showers in winter, which lead to damp foggy conditions (Chaudhary and Bawa 2011). Plantations of Japanese Cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) are scat-tered among the montane subtropical and montane wet tem-perate broadleaf forests (Meura et al. 1983). From May and August 2017, we encountered three Asian Glass Lizards (Dopasia gracilis) at three proximate sites (sepa-rated by no more than about 500 m) in the Darjeeling Hills Fig. 2. Field observations made during the study in Darjeeling, India, Eastern Himalaya (A). Dorsum of the dead individual of Dopasia gracilis (B). The dead individual of Dopasia gracilis being measured with an mm-scale ruler, showing the two injury marks on the ventrum. (C). The live individual of Dopasia gracilis brooding with an egg under a pile of decaying leaf-litter (D). A typical micro-habitat where the live individual of Dopasia gracilis was encountered. Photographs by Aditya Pradhan.PRADHAN AND YONLE  REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS  •  27(3):508–511  •  DEC 2020510(Fig. 1). The first individual, which we were unable to pho-tograph, was on a roadside near a small stream (27.04172°N, 88.36168°E; elev. 1,578 m asl) on 2 May 2017. The sec-ond individual (SVL 144 mm, total length 262 mm with a regenerated tail; Fig. 2A) was dead on a trail (27.03954°N, 88.35796°E; elev. 1,590 m asl) with two injuries on its venter (Fig. 2B) on 14 May 2017. The third individual (estimated total length >300 mm, also with a regenerated tail), encoun-tered during a VES (27.03956°N, 88.35774°E; elev. 1,600 m asl) on 15 August 2017, was brooding an egg under a pile of decaying leaf litter (Fig. 2C). When disturbed by our pres-ence, it escaped, leaving the oval egg that measured 19 mm along its longest axis. These sites were characterized by damp forest, decaying leaf-litter, and fallen branches (Fig. 2D). The live individuals were sluggish when first encoun-tered (Smith 1935; Ahmed and Dasgupta 1992) but moved quickly when disturbed. These lizards are known to feign death (Smith 1935) and autotomize their tails when attacked (Smith 1935; Jha and Thapa 2002). All three of the individu-als we encountered had regenerated tails (glass lizards with intact tails are rare; Anderson 1871). Also, that all three were in damp areas is consistent with reports that this species favors moist conditions (Anderson 1871; Smith 1935). The observation of brooding in August is in line with the breeding season (July–September) mentioned in Smith (1935). However, the presence of only one egg, as opposed to reported clutch sizes of four–seven eggs (Smith 1935; Sharma 2005), was unusual. The egg was slightly larger than the 18-mm maximum recorded in Smith (1935) and Sharma (2005). These glass lizards are thought to be nocturnal and subsist on a diet of insects and earthworms (Smith 1935). They hibernate during winter months (Smith 1935; Jha and Thapa 2002), and we encountered no individuals after the monsoon season. In India, the Asian Glass Lizard is protected under Schedule IV of the Wildlife Protection Act (1991) (Jha and Thapa 2002) but has not been assessed by the IUCN Red List. The major threat to the species is habitat loss (Sharma 2005), but local residents, mistaking it for a snake, also often kill them whenever they are encountered (e.g., Wangyal 2013). Nevertheless, when we showed a color photograph to local residents in Darjeeling, most of them classified it as a snake, identified the species as “tukre saanp”(= “fragile snake” in Nepali), and stated that these animals were occasionally encountered during the monsoon months. This suggests that the species is less rare than the absence of recent accounts would imply and that the occurrence of Dopasia gracilis may have gone unnoticed in the eyes of the scientific community due to the shy nature and nocturnal habits of the species or because of insufficient sampling efforts during the very few herpetofaunal studies conducted in the region.AcknowledgmentsWe thank Dr. Kaushik Deuti, Scientist-C, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, for the help and support he provided dur-ing the archival work. We are grateful to members of the local community for sharing their local knowledge of the species. We also thank the Head of Post Graduate Department of Zoology, Darjeeling Government College for all the support.Literature CitedAhmed, S. and G. Dasgupta. 1992. Reptilia, pp. 1–65. In: A.K. Ghosh (ed.), Fauna of West Bengal. Part 2 (Reptilia, Amphibia, Fishes, Hemichordata and Archaeozoology). State Fauna Series 3. Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, India.Anderson, J. 1871. On some Indian reptiles. Proceedings of Zoological Society London 1871: 149–211.Boulenger, G.A. 1885. Catalogue of the Lizards in the British Museum (Natural History). Second edition. Vol. II. Iguanidæ, Xenosauridæ, Zonuridæ, Anguidæ, Anniellidæ, Helodermatidæ, Varanidæ, Xantusidæ, Teiidæ, Amphisbænidæ. Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), London, United Kingdom.Chaudhary, P. and K.S. Bawa. 2011. Local perceptions of climate change validated by scientific evidence in the Himalayas. Biology Letters 7: 767–770. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0269.Chettri, B. and S. Bhupathy. 2007. 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Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), London, United Kingdom.Gray, J.E. 1853. Description of some undescribed species of reptiles collected by Dr. Joseph Hooker in the Khassia Mountains, East Bengal, and Sikkim Himalaya. The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Ser. 2, 12: 386–392.Jha, A. and K. Thapa. 2002. Reptiles and Amphibians of Sikkim. Mrs. Shila Jha, Chhattisgarh, India.Lalremsanga, H.T., L. Khawlhring, and Lalrotluanga. 2010. Three additional lizard (Squamata: Sauria) records for Mizoram, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 2: 718–720.Meura, P.N., K.S. Bawa, P.K. Khosla, and A.S. Hans. 1983. Floristic account of some forest types of the eastern Himalayas. Nelumbo, The Bulletin of the Botanical Survey of India 25: 1–18. DOI: 10.20324/nelumbo/v25/1983/75063.Mittermeier, R.A., W.R. Turner, F.W. Larsen, T.M. Brooks, and C. Gascon. 2011. Global biodiversity conservation: The critical role of hotspots, pp. 3–22. In: F.E. Zachos and J.C. 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Notes on Asian Glass Lizards, Dopasia gracilis (Gray 1845), in Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya, India

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