Discovering a new lizard

by Shanika Sriyananda

A reptile with four legs and a long tail is called a lizard. This is the normal innocent creature seen sun bathing on your roof or on a boundary wall. The lizard which is called 'bodilima' or 'katussa' or 'bohonda' in Sinhala is famous in our proverbs.

When somebody is trying to be proud unnecessarily we say 'Bohondage kare rathran Banda Wage' (As gold is hung on a lizard's neck) and 'katussa wage pata maru karrane epa' (Don't change like a lizard).

The 'Bohonda' that is described here is not just an ordinary garden lizard but the one and only lizard of the kind existing in the whole world. Named as Cophosis ceylanica Peters in 1861 by herpetologist Peters found in the Ramboda area, the small lizard was very recently identified as a separate new species.

Today it is named as Cophotis dumbarae and in Sinhala Dumbara Kuru bodilima.

The new discovery was done recently by researchers Kelum Manamendra-Ara chchi of the Wildlife Heritage Trust (WHT), Anslem de Silva, Head of the Amphibian and Reptiles Research Organisation (ARROS) of Sri Lanka and Thasun Amerasinghe.

The endemic ovoviviparous Sri Lankan lizard genus Cophotis is considered as a single species Cophotis Ceylanica Peters and found only in tropical mountain cloud forests in the southern part of Sri Lanka.

Cophotis has been considered monotypic and endemic to Sri Lanka. According to new findings, Cophotis ceylanica has been recorded for many years from the Dumbara range (Knuckles) but these lizards in two areas - Dumbara and central hills - have not been critically compared.

Unfortunately, the specimens from Gammaduwa in the Dumbara Hills, deposited by Deraniyagala in the National museum, Colombo have been lost. Thasun Amerasinghe says that 17 lizards and 14 endemic species have been recorded from Sri Lanka and with the new discovery the total number of lizards will be 18.

" When compared with the specimens of the Cophotis ceylanica at Knuckles and the central hills, the morphological characters of these species were different. We could not say that the lizard species in the Knuckles range was Cophotis ceylanica", he says.

The team named the new lizard species as Cophotis dumbarae which can be found in the Knuckles range above 1,400 metres.

He says that the new pigmy lizard is not the lizard species that was discovered by Peter but is a new species. The Cophotis dumbarae has been recorded from four other localities in the Dumbara hills Dotugala, Gammaduwa, Kobonilagala and Rangala.

The holotype of Cophotis ceylanica can be found near Ramboda. Amarasinghe says that the vicinity of Ramboda is no longer habitable for Cophotis as the forests are converted to tea plantations.

" However, in Ramboda, 3 km from the Pidurutalagala Forest Reserve, Cophotis ceylanica is still recorded but the best known population of this lizard species is in the Horton Plains National park and its environs".

"Cophotis Dumbarae differs from its only congener by having a greater mid-venerated scale count, smooth, granular mid scales, smoothly carinate, obtuse chest scales, triangular ventral scales and a less well-developed gular sac", says Amerasinghe.

A surprising feature of the Cophotis dumbarae is that it is different in breeding. All the lizard species found in Sri Lanka lay eggs but this small six inch pigmy lizard, which has the ability of holding things from its tiny tail produces babies.

The most important factor is that this new finding highlights the need for the immediate conservation of these endemic and critically threatened species found only in a small patch of the Knuckles range.

According to Amerasinghe, Knuckles needs to be upgraded to a World Heritage Site and International Man and Biosphere site. Like any other endemic species in Sri Lanka, this, the world's one and only pigmy lizard is in the brink of extinction due to man's destructive ways.

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