Date:March 16, 2016
Source:Case Western Reserve University
Snakes known to produce some of the most toxic venoms swim the shallows of the western Pacific and eastern Indian oceans and sun themselves on island coasts from southwestern Japan to Indonesia, the Andaman Islands to Fiji.
But to find banded sea kraits, ask a guy in Cleveland. Or at least look up his work.
Iulian Gherghel, who is earning a PhD in biology at Case Western Reserve University, teamed with researchers in Oklahoma and Europe to create a database of the snakes' distribution. They published a description of their work and analyses in the current issue of the journal ZooKeys.
The database is designed to help conservation efforts and guide medical researchers who want to study the venom of sea kraits, environmental researchers who want to study their ecology and tourists who want to see the animals, the authors said.
"These snakes harbor potential for research in biomedicine," Gherghel said. "The venom has proteins that may be useful in the future development of drugs for treating cancer, neurological disorders and heart disease."
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