Stressed Out Mongooses Can't Cope with Baby Booms

By Hazel Nichols, Liverpool John Moores University | July 30, 2014 08:22pm ET

This article was originally published at The Conversation.The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Many of us know from personal experience that raising children can be stressful, but a new study reveals that stress can be enough to affect the quality of parenting – in mongooses, at least.

A recent study investigates the relationship between stress hormones and parental care in the banded mongoose, a small African mammal that lives in large family groups.

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Rare Ginger Mongoose Caught on Camera

A rare redheaded mongoose was recently captured in camera-trap photos in Indonesia. The animal, initially not recognized by local conservationists, looks like an oversized, orange-coated weasel and is believed to be a ginger version of the usually brown collared mongoose.

Flora & Fauna International (FFI) said the pictures were taken during a training session for community rangers in a wildlife reserve in Aceh, a province of Indonesia located on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra. FFI officials believe the animal belongs to the species Herpestes semitorquatus, a type of mongoose that has been recorded in Sumatra only occasionally and is noted as Data Deficient by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), meaning there is not enough information to determine its conservation status.

While this sighting was unusual, camera trap surveys in nearby Malaysian Borneo have yielded five independent photographic records of mongooses with a distinct reddish-orange pelt, reports a recent study in the Small Carnivore Conservation Journal.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/22344-rare-ginger-mongoose-caught-on-camera.html

24 new species of lizards discovered on Caribbean islands are close to extinction

Skinks threatened by introduced mongoose

April 2012. In a single new scientific publication, 24 new species of skinks, all from islands in the Caribbean, have been discovered and scientifically named. According to Blair Hedges, a professor of biology at Penn State University and the leader of the research team, half of the newly added skink species already may be extinct or close to extinction, and all of the others on the Caribbean islands are threatened with extinction.

Mongoose predation
The researchers found that the loss of many skink species can be attributed primarily to predation by the mongoose -- an invasive predatory mammal that was introduced by farmers to control rats in sugarcane fields during the late nineteenth century.

130 new species of reptile discovered every year
About 130 species of reptiles from all over the world are added to the global species count each year in dozens of scientific articles. However, not since the 1800s have more than 20 reptile species been added at one time. Primarily through examination of museum specimens, the team identified a total of 39 species of skinks from the Caribbean islands, including 6 species currently recognized, and another 9 named long ago but considered invalid until now.

Hedges and his team also used DNA sequences, but most of the taxonomic information, such as counts and shapes of scales, came from examination of the animals themselves. "Now, one of the smallest groups of lizards in this region of the world has become one of the largest groups," Hedges said. "We were completely surprised to find what amounts to a new fauna, with co-occurring species and different ecological types." He added that some of the new species are 6 times larger in body size than other species in the new fauna.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/caribbean-skink.html