Earless Dragons in Decline?

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Serpentess

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Just heard something about some research on the Earless Dragon that said the numbers have dramatically declined in the last 2 years and that they're thinking about a captive breeding program?

Anyone else heard anything about this?
 
just heard the same thing, all i could think about when watching it was 'where do i get some' lol. but its sad that another one of beatiful reptiles are at risk of extinction.
 
Gotta love this countrys environmental record hey? and yet most state govts steadfastly do their best to make it as difficult as possible for us herpos to keep reptiles in captivity!
 
Tympanocryptis pinguicolla are local to my area & I am yet to see one.. They are listed as endangered and have been for a while.
 
breeding programme, well they should open it to all States if thats what is required
i havent seen any for sale for a couple of years, so i would say they are probably going to be difficult to get number increased, if they are available for vic keepers and you hear of some, give me a tingle i will certainly help out
 
The species that is in decline (Tympanocryptis pinguicolla) is not the species that was once common in captivity (Tympanocryptis lineata/tetraporophora).
 
I don't believe any species of Earless dragon has ever been common in captivity. Some seem to go through a brief period where a number are available because of a successful breeding program with a particular female, vis-a vie, T. centralis about 4-5 years ago coming out of Alice Springs and T. cephalus and T.tetraporophora coming from a captive breeding program on the Subshine Coast. But other then that I would say they are and have always been relatively hard to get in captivity. I know I have had to work extremely hard with my contacts to get hold of the specimens I have been able to acquire.

There are 8 species of earless dragons currently recognised. Of these there is only one that is seriously at risk in the wild, T. pinguicolla. All other species are relatively common although the effect of recent flooding in inland Australia on populations is still unknown.

The concern with T. pinguicolla (the Grassland Earless Dragon) is that the population that was thought to exist west of Brisbane has been reclassified as an island population of T. tetraporophora. (See Wilson and Swan 3rd Edition 2010). This means quite literally that of the 3 locations where this species was thought/known to occur, there is now only one that still has a population that appears to be viable and sustaining itself. The other location to the west of Melbourne has not seen one of these animals collected since 1960. in the ensuing period there have been some reports of T. pinguicolla being collected just north of Melbourne on the urban fringe, but how reliable these reports are I am not sure.

I have worked with earless dragons for the last 10 years and I can say quite categorically, they are an extremely difficult animal to keep. The husbandry with these animals needs to be exactly right. I have and I know of a handful of others who have bred various species of this group. The five species that I know have been bred are centralis, cephalus, lineata, intima, and tetraporophora. The 3 species that are not in private keepers collections to my knowledge at this point are, T. pinguicolla, houstoni and uniformis. I say this because I see dozens of posts on this and other forums from people either claiming that the keeping process is easy or wanting to get hold of some of these animals and then asking how to keep them. If you have to ask how then you probably really should not keep these guys. If you cannot give daily attandance to these animals without stressing them then they will not do well. They need to monitored very closely without being obtrusive. Stress is a serious problem.

The captive breeding program with T. pinguicolla has been floated for the last couple of years. There are even some thoughts with the regulatory authority involved that selected private keepers should be included. I believe this is critical if the program is to be successful. (See ARC and the work Gerry Marantelli has done with safeguarding the future of Corroboree Frogs). I fully support not only the proposal to captive breed but to include suitably experienced private keepers and totally endorse the suitability of one of the people who I am aware has been asked for their EOI. Whether these animals ever end up in private collections is not important although the availability of viable numbers of any species breeding regularly in captivity certainly gives hope that the species can be reintroduced into the wild assuming all other environmental parameters have been addressed.
 
Thanks all for the input, and special thanks to longirostris for your in depth reply.
I hope that they do manage to organise a successful captive breeding program for these dragons, especially with the species of concern.
 
Mark,

The darling downs "tetras" are in a best fit place...they are much more closely allied morphologically to pinguicolla and come from an area that has many sympatric (basalt grassland specialists) eg such as Carlia tetradactyla, Delma inornata etc but genetically they are closer to tetras than pinguicolla.....from what i understand they maybe an extremely localised cryptic species in itself.

I will say this...they without a doubt have the best cryptic colouration of any herp I have seen

Cheers,
Scott
 
Scott,

I spoke to Steve Wilson recently about this and he also expressed a view similar to yours that "Downs Tets" were not T.pinguicolla and were not necessarily T. tetraporophora. I believe there is an as yet unpublished paper outlining the research that has bought about the rethink on these animals. I don't have a problem with the changes but it does highlight the vulnerability of isolated island populations of any species, which was the reason for my earlier post.

My main interest in talking to Steve was the disappearance of the Queensland population of T.cephalus in the third edition of his book with Gerry Swan. He referred me to another recently published paper that bought about this redistribution. Having kept the Qld form of both T. cephalus and T. intima I was more then a little concerned that these animals appear to now be regarded as the same species. We had an interesting discussion about this. Having read the paper Steve referred me to it is difficult to deny the conclusion regarding this species. However I still have reservations about this. There has been some concern expressed by others I have spoken to that have read the same paper, regarding sampling and sampling size.

My thoughts on this are similar to yours with "Downs Tets", its a case of best fit until more work is done in this area.

The work being done in microbiology and phylogenetics is rapidly changing what we think we know about the classification of long standing clusters of species within genera. I recently read the J. Melville et al paper published on the 15th December 2010 that proposes several changes within the Amphibolurus and Lophognathus complex. Some of these I have been suggesting myself for some time ie; A. nobbi is actually D. nobbi and L. burnsi is in fact A. burnsi.

On the basis of my observations with captive individuals in my collection, I was more then comfortable with my grouping of longirostris, temporalis and gilberti all within the same complex. How wrong could I be. Turns out that with the benefit of some micro biological analysis that all three species are totally unrelated. Looks like we will have L. gilberti, G. longirostris (Gowidon longirostris) and an as yet unnamed new genera for a radically reduced range distribution of ??? temporalis. Etymology for Gowidon, proposed and named for the late Graeme Gow by Wells and Wellington in 1985. Rather inciteful chaps these guys, turns out they were right about this as well. And yet morphologically these three species are as similar as one could expect to find.

I envy you greatly as I have not had the pleasure of actually seeing T. pinguicolla in the flesh, despite extensive searching in the previously known habitats West of Melbourne over an extended period of several years. I have never visited the Downs area of Queensland. I hope to rectify this at some stage in the future.
 
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