Catalogue of herpetological specimens from peninsular India at the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology & Natural History (SACON), India

Abstract

We list the herpetological voucher specimens in the holdings of the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology & Natural History (SACON), a wildlife research institute in India. Most of the collections are the fruition of fieldwork by SACON’s herpetologist and a coauthor of this work—late Dr. Subramanian Bhupathy (1963–2014). Taxonomically, the collection represents 125 species, comprising 29 amphibian species belonging to eight families and 96 reptilian species belonging to 17 families. Geographically, the material in this collection originates from the Western Ghats, the Eastern Ghats, the Deccan Plateau, and the Coromandel Coast, comprehensively covering all ecoregions of peninsular India. A total of 15 taxa (three amphibians, 12 reptiles) remain to be fully identified and are provisionally referred to most-resembling taxa, with cf. prefix. All the specimens in this collection are non-types as on date. 

Records of two toads Duttaphrynus scaber and D. stomaticus (Amphibia: Anura: Bufonidae) from southeastern India

“…Similarly, reports of D. scaber from India are from the Western Ghats (Boulenger 1892;Satyamurti 1967;Vijayakumar 2002;Ganesh & Asokan 2010;Padhye et al 2013) and the Eastern Ghats (Thurston 1888;Satyamurti 1967;Srinivasulu & Das 2008;Ganesh & Asokan 2010;Ganesh et al 2018), Deccan (Donahue & Daniel 1966), while a few reports exist from the Circar Coast (Dutta 1988) and Coromandel Coast (Rao 1915;Das & Martin 1998;Ganesh & Chandramouli 2007;Nath et al 2012;Seshadri et al 2012read with Srinivasulu et al 2013. A series of preserved specimens of both these species from southern India (Coimbatore, Srivilliputhur, Madurai near the Western Ghats foothills and Tuticorin near the coast) has been reported (Ganesh et al 2020). But it has not been corroborated by field surveys that these toads exist in the regions mentioned.…”

Catalogue of herpetological specimens from Meghalaya, India at the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History

“…Here, we list the collected specimens (only whole body, only non-larval) along with their voucher collection numbers. Institutional acronyms follow that of Ganesh et al (2020). Higher classification of amphibians and reptiles follow Frost (2021) and Uetz et al (2021), respectively.…”

“…SACON is an institution under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India. A part of the herpetological collections at SACON from peninsular India has recently been catalogued (Ganesh et al 2020). As a part of an ongoing study in select community reserves of Meghalaya, herpetofaunal specimens were collected by P. Karthik (research fellow of the project 19604 J TT entitled 'Characterization of Community Reserves and Assessment of their Conservation Values in Meghalaya' funded by the National Mission on Himalayan Studies) and RSN and are deposited at SACON as vouchers.…”

Correction to Catalogue of herpetological specimens from Meghalaya, India at the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON)

“…SACON -Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History now houses about 200 species of the herpetological collection. However, the precise number (of samples) is unknown, include the major contribution from Pandi Karthik & R.S Naveen and a renowned herpetologist Dr. (Late) S. Bhupathy's (see Ganesh et al 2020). Nevertheless, SACON has published two series of catalogues on the care and maintenance of herpetological collections (Ganesh et al 2020, Chandramouli et al 2021a& 2021b.…”