Taxonomic studies in India: Patterns, Processes, Causes and Consequences
1. Taxonomic Studies In
Indian Batrachology:
Batrachology:
Patterns, Processes, Causes & Consequences
Gururaja KV, Ph.D.,
Research Scientist, IISc, Bangalore
gururajakv@gmail.com
2. Flow of the talk
Batrachology in India
Patterns
◦ Taxonomic descriptions
over time, space, authors,
etc.
Processes
◦ Processes behind such
description
Causes
◦ Reasons for the spurt in
discoveries
Consequences
◦ What next!
◦ Journey of an ecologist in
Taxonomy!
3. Whom do you call amphibians?
Those vertebrates that live both in water as well as
land
That means ...we too?
Photo credit:
http://divebarbados.net/Current%20Photos/Pictures/Green%20Turtle%201.jpg
http://www.kidcyber.com.au/IMAGES/hippoaggro_s.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/wildlifeweb/reptile/gharial/gharial03tfk.jpg
4. In fact, amphibians are ...
Dual lifers ...
◦ Two stages in life – a tadpole stage and an adult
stage
◦ From Greek, Amphi – dual, bian – life forms
5. What’s unique in them?
Generally, aquatic and terrestrial
inhabitants, Some are arboreal, and some
fussorial too
6. Metamorphosis
They metamorphose from
tadpole to adult
Life span: from 10 months
to 55 years
7. Ectotherms
Body temperature externally maintained
Hiding away from Sun
Basking in Sun
12. Batrachology in India
As of today 308 species, belonging to 14 families,
54 genera (4.64% of 6638 species in the world),
248 Species described from India (80.5%)
124 authors, single species description to as
many as 43 species
Since 2000, 81 new species (33%) with 46 papers
on Taxonomy and taxonomy related issues, 12 on
ecology, 6 on reproduction, 10 on others
So Taxonomy ‘rules’ at present Indian
Batrachology!!!
13. Research in Batrachology
Viviparity in caecilians
Geneophis seshachari
Gower et al., 2008. J Evol Biol. 21(5):1220-6
14. Other issues…
Frog skipping tadpole stage
Gururaja and Ramachandra, 2006. Curr. Sci. 90(3):450-454
15. Other issues…
Biju and Bossyut, 2003. Nature. 425: 711–714
17. Skin extracts and pesticidal
impacts…
1. Giri et al., 2006. doi:10.1016/j.toxicon.2006.06.011
2. Sai et al., 2001. doi:10.1074/jbc.M006615200
3. Gurushankara et al., 2007. doi:10.1007/s00244-006-0015-5
18. Conservation and Management
Das, A., Krishnaswamy, J., Bawa, K. S., Kiran, M. C., Srinivas, V., Kumar, N. S., et al. 2006.
Prioritization of conservation areas in the Western Ghats, India. Biological Conservation,
133, 16−31.
Gururaja KV, Sameer Ali and Ramachandra TV. 2008. Influence of land-use changes in
river basins on diversity and distribution of amphibians. In: Environment Education
for Ecosystem Conservation
43. What was the reason?
No proper typification
No specimen deposition in a museum
No knowledge of ICZN Codes to the
authors
To certain extent...”EGO”
44. What we did...?
Called up first author! ...
Joined hands with ZSI people, who
happened collect one individual with
permission from Kudremukh
They also contacted first author...No
response
Took decision, after an year of
communication with first author, to
publish it with a new name....
46. Uproar among the seniors ...
Deniels wrote “Taxonomic Vandalism...” in
current Science
But we responded in most polite way,
though protested to the Editor of the
Journal on using such words and in most
scientific way lambasted “Vandalism”
47. To look further
Do not lose original tree
for phylogentic tree
Integrate phylogenetics,
acoustics, osteology,
etc...to understand a
species better
Make taxonomy a After Odem (1971)
passion and not a
profession...
Take it to simpler level
...Heisenberg’s Principle
48. Eight steps to Enlightenment and
Taxonomic Nirvana – Evanhuis (2007)
enjoyment of nature
enjoyment of collecting
enjoyment of sorting
enjoyment of the discovery
enjoyment of researching taxonomic
literature
enjoyment of describing
enjoyment of submitting your
manuscript for publication.
enjoyment of educating others
49. There was a time, when
taxonomist used to describe more
than 5 species in a single paper
Now we are in such a time, where
5 papers are written on a single
species
Do not get into the ‘RAT
RACE’