The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Lazarus effect: Voeltzkow chameleon rediscovered after 100 years

2020-10-30T17:18:12.014Z


The Voeltzkow chameleon had been considered extinct for more than a hundred years. Now researchers found the animals on an expedition to Madagascar.


Icon: enlarge

"Mayflies among the vertebrates": male Voeltzkow chameleon

Photo: Frank Glaw / dpa

Biologists are worried about the disappearance of more and more animal and plant species.

More than 500 terrestrial vertebrates alone are acutely threatened according to a study, some experts believe that the earth is in the middle of a historic mass extinction.

The Sumatran rhinoceros or the stumpy-footed frog and the great billy goat - they all could soon no longer exist.

But sometimes an animal reappears that experts had long since written off.

They coined a nice term for it: When the dead appear again, they speak of the Lazarus effect.

The naming goes back to the figure of the same name from the Bible, which Jesus brought back to life.

Researchers in northwest Madagascar have now witnessed such a find.

No scientist had seen a Voeltzkow chameleon for more than a hundred years.

An expedition of the Munich State Zoological Collection (ZSM) found these colorful animals again.

Scientists suspect that Furcifer voeltzkowi, the Latin name for it, only lives a few months during the rainy season.

Icon: enlarge

Female Voeltzkow chameleons are particularly colorful when they are under stress, when they meet males or when they are pregnant

Photo: Kathrin Glaw / dpa

"These animals are, so to speak, the mayflies among the vertebrates," explained Frank Glaw, curator for reptiles and amphibians at the ZSM.

"So you have to be in the right place at the right time to be able to detect these chameleons. And that is not that easy during the rainy season, as many roads are then inaccessible. This is probably one of the reasons why the colorful reptile has been overlooked for so long. "

According to the current state of knowledge, the chameleon species is not acutely threatened with extinction.

However, since many dry forests are being cut down, the habitat of this species is also shrinking.

During their expedition, the researchers found females for the first time.

The animals are particularly colorful when they are under stress, when they meet males or when they are pregnant.

The study on the findings appeared on Friday in the journal "Salamandra".

There are lost species all over the world.

To find out more about their endangerment status and save them from extinction, the nature conservation organization Global Wildlife Conservation launched a worldwide initiative in 2017.

The goal is to track down the 25 most searched species.

In the course of this program, the sixth has now been rediscovered with the Voeltzkow chameleon.

Icon: The mirror

joe / dpa

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2020-10-30

You may like

News/Politics 2024-03-14T09:57:42.195Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.