New checklist of Indian Amphibians released, 20 species critically endangered

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Panaji: Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has updated checklist of Indian Amphibians summing up its decadal exercise, which has listed twenty species as ‘critically endangered’, a senior official said.

Environmentalist Nirmal Kulkarni, who was part of ZSI’s exercise of updating the checklist of amphibious species, said that there has been increase by 150 per cent in the documentation compared to the list prepared in the year 2009, over a decade back.

“A comprehensive Checklist of Indian Amphibians has been updated and launched on the Zoological Survey of India website. This checklist has been uploaded on  May  15, 2020,” said Kulkarni.

“Since 2009, Scientists of the Zoological Survey of India in collaboration with other Indian institutes have been updating the Indian amphibian checklist periodically,” he said.

The Goa-based environmentalist said “in 2009 the total number of Indian amphibian species recorded in the checklist was 284 while now, after a decade the checklist records a 447 species, which is more than 150 per cent  upsurge in documentation in one decade.

“The updated checklist includes systematic classification with scientifically updated species names and year of discovery with their International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List conservation status, available till April 2020,” he said. Kulkarni said that the systematics followed is after Amphibian Species of the World database and, the nomenclature after the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) codes.

“Among the amphibians listed, 20 species are treated as Critically endangered and 35 species as Endangered,” he said.

“The checklist highlights 19 per cent of amphibians as data deficient species and about 39 per cent as not assessed as per Red List conservation status of IUCN,” he said.

A data deficient species is one which has been categorized by the IUCN as offering insufficient information for a proper assessment of conservation status to be made.

“It is high time to assess the IUCN conservation status for the Indian ‘Data Deficient 19 per cent which are  86 species and ‘Not Assessed’ 39 per cent which are  175 species category of amphibians based on species specific field explorations,” Kulkarni said.

He said that this updated comprehensive checklist will help students of Herpetology, researchers and conservation scientists as well as policy makers to understand the diversity of Indian amphibians and their up to date nomenclature.

The checklist is compiled by research scientists K.P. Dinesh from the Zoological Survey of India, Western Regional Centre, Pune,  C. Radhakrishnan from Calicut,  B.H. Channakeshavamurthy from ZSI, Calicut, P. Deepak from Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru and  Nirmal U Kulkarni from the Mhadei Research Centre, Goa.

 

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