I just returned from some fieldwork in Tanzania along with Luke Mahler, a grad student in the Losos Lab at Harvard. We were collecting chameleons and other herps for his work on ecological and morphological evolution and my work on lizard malaria parasites. It was a pretty successful trip (just surviving the immigration office in Dar es Salaam was a huge accomplishment!) with some really cool species found - including this Rhampholeon species from near the Udzungwe Mountains. This tiny creature (about 4 cm long) has to have inspired a Muppet or two.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Real Life Muppets
I just returned from some fieldwork in Tanzania along with Luke Mahler, a grad student in the Losos Lab at Harvard. We were collecting chameleons and other herps for his work on ecological and morphological evolution and my work on lizard malaria parasites. It was a pretty successful trip (just surviving the immigration office in Dar es Salaam was a huge accomplishment!) with some really cool species found - including this Rhampholeon species from near the Udzungwe Mountains. This tiny creature (about 4 cm long) has to have inspired a Muppet or two.
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6 comments:
Sweet!
That is a spectacular animal!
We think it might be R. moyeri, a recently described species, but needs to be really looked at. Every photo I took of it, I just burst out laughing - just a peculiar little creature.
Awwwwww. If you're ever up for some muppety fish, check out the the balloon lumpsucker.
I thought moyeri had a down-turned rostral process. I don't know enough about the distribution of these east African leaf-chameleons, but alternative possible species are R. nchisiensis and R. uluguruensis.
More importantly, did you guys happen to find any terrestrial Hemidactylus? Like squamulatus/tropidolepis/barbouri? Need natural history data!
The little guy just doesn't match any of the photos in the book very well...we'll see.
No terrestrial Hemi's - just some platycephalus...so guess that means we'll have to go back.
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