The northern-most living snake in the world! They go far north of us, even!

A large female adder, curled in a defensive posture among leaf litter, sticks, and rocks.

Three weeks after being in the rainforest of Madagascar, I spent the day surveying reptiles and amphibians in Denmark. Somewhat different weather. But still very rewarding. We saw a whopping NINETEEN adders! 🐍🧪

Does anyone working for Meta think ad breaks actually work? All it does is make it easier for me to close the app. So in a way, I am grateful, I suppose.

New paper out: this is the 3rd ch. from my M.Sc.-thesis that started in 2019! How did the toxin glands as well as the composition of the toxins secreted from these glands change after an African toad invaded novel ranges and what are potential drivers of these changes?
doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Sunburst diagram of taxonomic distribution of occurrences in GBIF in March 2022, as tweeted here https://x.com/rdmpage/status/1501477098434744332?s=20

Sunburst diagram of taxonomic distribution of occurrences in GBIF https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/taxonomy?occurrence_status=PRESENT on 9 April 2026

Four years ago as @gbif.org passed 2 billion records, I tweeted that GBIF was, to a first approximation a database of birds x.com/rdmpage/stat.... Four years later we have nearly twice as many records (3.6 billion) and... it's still a mostly a database of birds www.gbif.org/occurrence/t...

Do you print in transparent or white resin to get that realistic translucency?

I had never realised this before, but you’re right it looks fantastic and very convincing!

A weird bulbous expansion stretches up from the back of thorax of a robber fly, which has somehow gotten attached to the tip of a leaf in the forest.

Something parasitic definitely got this robberfly I found stuck to this leaf in littoral forest of southeastern Madagascar. But what kind of parasite? Fungal? Vespid? Any ideas? 🧪🪰

Dendropsophus are not a threat

With UV-triggered fluorescence we are never talking about the ability to see UV and the patterns some animals have in UV. We are talking about the conversion of UV to visible wavelength light, and whether or not that visible wavelength light is perceptible. A subtle but vital difference!

I totally agree—it’s not that special, and most of it cannot possibly be functional because the conversion rate is so weak that it wouldn’t be visible without a powerful UV source, and the sun doesn’t cut it. In almost every case I’ve seen so far, it looks like a coincidental byproduct.

Alcohol itself actually just fluoresces a little under black light, or at least something in 70% ethanol seems to. We noticed this a lot whilst studying fluorescence of chameleons

@davehone.bsky.social you said on the recent croc episode of Terrible Lizards that you always have to look up which is R and which is K selection. There’s a great mnemonic I learned at uni: R for Rabbit, K for Kelephant.

Could it not be that lineages with greater variation in flower morphology have higher rates of taxonomic description and/or genetic lineage inclusion in analysed datasets?

We advanced to the 2nd round of the Indianapolis Zoo's Uproar Conservation Challenge! Now vote for Rhampholeon acuminatus in round 2 to help our species advance again & bring us closer to the $10,000 conservation prize!

Round 2 voting ends March 23 & can be done at www.UproarChallenge.com

Boophis reticulatus, a brown tree frog with weird ridges on its back, perched on a serrated bright green Pandanus leaf.

Platypelis pollicaris, a little brown narrow-mouth frog with flecks of gold over its body, sitting atop a bright green leaf

A female Calumma oshaughnessyi, a large green and grey chameleon with diagonal stripes up its body, walking along a branch toward camera left.

A portrait of Liopholidophis dolicocercus (sorry if you’re using a system that reads these Latin names aloud!), a black, brown, and bright yellow snake. In my years working with snakes in Madagascar, I think I have never had a more cooperative subject. It was totally calm and posable!

Yesterday we hiked out of the forest after five days totally off-grid. Hard to believe what’s happened in the world in the last five days! I’m quite glad we were out of signal range and able to focus on just excellent frogs and reptiles. 🧪🐸🦎🐍🇲🇬

We’ve had a rest day here in Ranomafana, but tomorrow we’re up at dawn to make our way to the park’s highest peak: Maharira. A specific frog—Anodonthyla eximia—takes us there, but the mountain has incredible herpetological diversity and is poorly surveyed, so we’re expecting many exciting finds! 🧪🐸

A little yellow and brown frog in the groove in the middle of a vibrant green Pandanus frond, its feet splayed to the side to brace it in place.

Platypelis tuberifera always remind me of a rockclimber bridging a chimney, the way they sit in the groove of Pandanus fronds. Such charming frogs! And we know so very little about their ecology. For instance, as far as I know nobody has ever found their eggs or tadpoles! 🧪🐸🇲🇬

A big brown tree frog on a rich green leaf. The flank of the frog is marbled with yellow, its toe webbing is orange, its thigh striped with dark brown, the edge of its eye bright green, and the edge of the lip bright yellow. It sounds gaudy, but really it’s quite subtle.

Boophis albilabris is one of Madagascar’s largest tree frogs. Today we found this individual just beside the road near Ranomafana National Park. 🐸🧪

A few Geckolepis, and a few Ebenavia! Wonderful geckos. Also some Phelsuma, including an undescribed species, but unfortunately not two we were looking for.

I’m quite partial to it, too.

More details will have to wait for some publications. Suffice to say I think some of what we found was truly incredible. Anyway, today we left the forest, tomorrow we hope to have our permit stamped, and then we make our way to the next field site in Ranomafana National Park 🐸🧪🇲🇬

Ah, I always find Research Station implies infrastructure. Electricity. We had phone signal and a solar panel, but otherwise totally off grid. We make our own tables and shelters, sleep in tents and eat on the ground.

A very small frog in the leaf litter. This is Mini mum. The name says it all: these frogs are approaching what we think is the minimum possible adult body size for a vertebrate.

Our main target species in this area was Mini mum, one of the smallest frogs in the world. Every morning, from at least 5 to 10, the air was full of their tiny peeping calls. Finding one is hard, despite incredible population density, because they live in the spaces between the leaf litter. 🇲🇬🐸🧪

A swamp with dark brown water, full of pandanus screw palms rising up to and above eye height. We had to wade to the knee through this water, leaving our shoes and socks soaked for the rest of the hike.

Dry littoral forest on the hills above the swamps. Still very humid - 80-90% - but there’s almost no moisture in the soil as it’s all just basically sand. It feels like this forest just shouldn’t exist. So weird. And so many orchids!!

But WHAT a forest! Dry littoral forest on sandy soil going down into shallow valleys full of these incredible swamps dominated by Pandanus and Ravenala. Choruses of different species of frogs take turns singing throughout the day and night. It’s a special place. 🧪🇲🇬🐸🌴

Fortunately the route was not a long one; the porters can make it in an hour or so. It took us about 90 minutes. But a good deal of that is in the scorching heat; we were sweating buckets today. 🧪🐸🇲🇬

The team with all 21 porters who helped get us into the forest, and also a chicken.

It took 21 porters to bring the materials for this team of eight to live and work for five days inside the forest. 19 to get us back out again today. They were awesome, some carrying very fragile or cumbersome loads through deep mud and swamp 🧪🇲🇬🐸

The team in front of a forest backdrop. From left to right: Augustin, a local guide working for the site managed by Missouri Botanical Gardens; Louisette, our phenomenal cook; Laza, a researcher working at the local environmental ministry office; Angeluc, expert guide; Alice, postdoc in my group working in herpetology and especially museomics; Sandratra, a student at the University of Antananarivo and trainer expert herpetologist; Ranary, another local guide; and yours truly, a giant (literally, apparently) goober who likes to set nearly impossible tasks like finding the eggs of specific frog species when we have no idea where they lay those eggs.

Here’s a photo of the awesome team I’ve been working with in Agnalazaha. Wonderful, extremely hard-working people. Such a privilege to be in this unique ecosystem with such a dedicated group! 🧪🇲🇬🐸

A chaotic scene of two wood-cut tables set at a right angle to one another, strewn with various scientific accoutrement, including a microscope and several boxes of cryotubes. A blue light is cast over the tables by the large tarp keeping everything in shade. Behind the tables, the littoral forest surrounds the science area. Some of the samples we needed were collected just a couple metres from the tables we have been working at.

My office for the last few days, where we have been collecting material to sequence for my ERC project, GEMINI, here in the littoral forest of Agnalazaha in south central eastern Madagascar. It’s been thrilling and even more successful than anticipated, with some VERY exciting new discoveries! 🐸🇲🇬🧪

A little green tree frog delicately spotted with red, sitting on a fern frond and singing into the night. Dozens of others nearby sing the same song, and females are hard to come by.

My team and I have spent a few days in the rainforest of Ranomafana National Park on our way east to the littoral forest south of Farafangana called Agnalazaha. It’s been dry here, but we were happy to find a few calling frogs, like this beautiful male Boophis tasymena. 🧪🐸