🇸🇨 Seychelles has 8 endemic caecilian species. Seven of them can all be found in Morne Seychellois National Park on Mahé island. These limbless amphibians are highly understudied due to their underground burrowing lifestyle. However, the difficulty makes finding one very rewarding!

The most exciting find of my recent fieldwork: the Montane Mahé Caecilian. Only found on the highest peak in Seychelles, this Critically Endangered amphibian had not been observed since 2015.

📷: @simonmaddock.bsky.social

And we're in it! 🐸🐸🐸

And who can forget the amazing Seychelles tree #frog (Tachycnemis seychellensis). This is a female, and in this particular population the males are brown.

We also found two species of caecilian but I failed to get any pictures.

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Thomasset's Seychelles frog (Sooglossus thomasseti) is the largest of the endemic Seychelles frog family Sooglossidae, and perhaps the rarest of them (or least frequently encountered at least). 🧪🐍🐸🔬

The IUCN Red List and Green Status workshops are going fantastically. Tonight we had a break from the computer and found several of the #amphibians that we have been assessing. Here is a beautiful Gardiner's Seychelles #frog (Sechellophryne gardineri), one of the smallest frogs in the World.

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We also had talks from the IUCN Red List (Louise Hobin) and Green Status of Species (Magdalena Cygan) authorities about their work. This is a precursor to the Red List and Green Status assessments coming up over the next four days.

Ellen did a fantastic talk about her PhD topic looking at climate change in #caecilians.

The Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation were here, who will be doing a segment about the symposium, and Ellen and I gave an interview about the importance of getting people together for these events.

Today's "SEYCHELLES ENDEMIC AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES: CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND NEXT STEPS FOR CONSERVATION" symposium was a great success, with many fascinating talks. There have been lots of updates since the last time we ran a Seychelles amphibian symposium in 2019.

There is a symposium happening on Monday 20th Jan, titled "SEYCHELLES ENDEMIC #AMPHIBIANS AND #REPTILES: CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND NEXT STEPS FOR #CONSERVATION". We will be streaming the talks if you can't be here: Link tinyurl.com/Seychelleshe... or use QR code.

Nb. Schedule is Seychelles time.

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