New family of limbless amphibians found

Scientists have discovered a new family of limbless amphibians from northeastern India with its ancient lineage traced to the eastern and western parts of Africa, the relationship, preserved from that time, the southern continents broke more than 150 million years ago.

Kerala-born Delhi University scientist, SD Biju and co-researchers from India and Europe reported their discovery in the last issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. They named the new family as Chikilidae and the new genus as Chikila, deriving the name from the Northeast Indian tribal language of Garo.

Until this discovery, there were only nine known families of legless amphibians, also called caecilians, found throughout the wet tropical regions of Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka, parts of East and West Africa, Seychelles and northern and eastern parts of South America. From morphological and DNA analysis, the researchers show that the new family has evolved independently of other species of caecilians from the time of the dinosaurs. Its closest relatives now live in Africa.
'Discovery of the Year'

"This is the amphibian discovery of the year," said Darrel Frost, Curator-in-charge, American Museum of Natural History, in a message to The Hindu when queried about the significance of the finding.

"An Indian amphibian species with ancient African roots make it clear that India has some very special lessons to teach us ... not only lucky to find, but the product of a very diligent work by a team of world class scientists."

Don Church, President and Director of the Wildlands Conservation, Global Wildlife Conservation, said in another message: "This study underscores the urgent need to increase biological exploration in places that were not previously thought to hold great clues to the history of life on our planet. I was surprised and fascinated that yet another completely new family of amphibians that crept on the ground next to dinosaurs only just now been discovered by scientists in the 21st century ... "

Said Dr. Biju: "We also found that Chikilidae is radiation from numerous species still unknown to science. The discovery comes after a ground-digging surveys spread over five years in nearly 250 locations in the northeastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim and West Bengal as part of my student Rachunliu G. Kamei's PhD work. "

The collaborative team that reports the find includes, in addition to Dr. Biju and Ms. Kamei, Ashish Thomas and Suresh Babu of the University of Delhi, David J. Gower, Emma Sherratt and Mark Wilkinson of the Natural History Museum, London, and Franky Bossuyt and Agnes Van Bocxlaer of Vrije University, Brussels.

Chikilidae is a group of extremely dedicated burrowers. They exhibit intriguing and highly specialized reproductive behavior. The mother builds an underground nest for their eggs and coils around them. The embryos hatch in about 2-3 months. The eggs undergo direct development, feeding on the yolk reserves and come out as miniature adults without intermediate free swimming larval stage that is used by amphibians in general, Dr. Biju said.

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