The ridge of mountains that runs parallel to Madagascar’s east coast descend in short order into rolling hills, followed by sand dunes, and ultimately meet the Indian Ocean. These rolling hills and sand dunes were once cloaked in low-elevation humid forest and littoral forest. Today those habitats are some of […]
Finding these frogs sometimes requires considerable trekking; pursuing strange new calls, to seek out new frogs in new forests; boldly going where no herpetologist has gone before. — Vences et al. 2024 At the right time of year along rushing streams in the humid rainforests that stretch the length of […]
In the 15th of August issue of the journal Salamandra, my colleagues and I published a new species of leaf-tailed gecko from northern Madagascar, Uroplatus garamaso! You can get the PDF of the description here. In 2009, I was on a voluntourism trip to northern Madagascar. I was there to study […]
About a year ago, I decided to set out on a major curatorial project, as one of my first large-scale projects for the herpetological collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark (NHMD), where I am the curator of reptiles and amphibians. The project: to update the taxonomy and organisation […]
Here at the end of 2022, it is time to do as I have done since 2016, and give some reflections on the year. These focus mostly on the academic aspects of the year, though for reasons that will soon become apparent, the personal and academic aspects of 2022 were […]
When you walk along streams in Madagascar, you frequently hear sounds like doors creaking and stomachs gurgling. These are the calls of little muddy-brown frogs in the Mantidactylus frog subgenus Brygoomantis. Today, my colleagues and I have published our magnum opus on these charming but secretive little frogs, describing 20 new […]
Open access (OA) is increasingly demanded by funders, and of course is desired by researchers and readers alike. Yet some journals charge incredibly high fees for you to publish your research open access. This has led to a lot of researchers being resigned to either publish behind a paywall, or […]
Today, my colleagues and I have published a monograph on part of the gecko genus Lygodactylus, describing eight new species from Madagascar in the journal Zootaxa. Lygodactylus are diurnal geckos, but most species are not as flashy as their cousins, the Phelsuma day geckos. They come mostly in mottled greys […]
Another year is over, and 2021 seemed still more full and stressful than 2020! So here are some reflections on my year from an academic perspective. The first of January 2021 saw me starting a new job: PI on a three-year German Research Foundation (DFG) funded PostDoc project in Michael […]
I am thrilled to announce that I will taking up the post of Curator of Herpetology at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, and Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of Copenhagen on the 1st of September, 2021! Having just started a PostDoc at the University of […]
The herpetofauna of the EU is relatively well studied, and it is rare that species new to science are discovered. Today, my colleagues and I have described a new species of blindsnake from the island of Mayotte—an island that lies in the western Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique, but […]
We have just published the discovery of a new species of chameleon, Brookesia nana, which is a new contender for the smallest reptile—and therefore the smallest amniote vertebrate—in the world! Our new paper is published in the Open Access journal Scientific Reports. Nine years ago, my colleagues reported on a few […]
2020 is over at last. What a year. If you will indulge me, I will do as I always do, and look back on my year from an academic perspective. What a year it was. I more or less started off my 2020 on a plane to New Zealand, heading […]
In 2014, I started working on the taxonomy of the diamond frogs of the genus Rhombophryne, a poorly-known group of semi-fossorial narrow-mouthed frogs from Madagascar. Since then, my colleagues and I have more than doubled the described species in the genus, and we know of several more candidate species that are […]
Today, the 4th of February 2020, we have published a paper resolving the soft-nosed Malagasy chameleons of the Calumma nasutum species complex in the Open Access journal Vertebrate Zoology. In the paper, led by Dr David Pröztel, we clarify the identity of old names in this species complex, and describe […]
