A team of scientists led by Dr. Michele Menegon of the Museo delle Scienze in Trento, Italy, has described a previously undocumented species of chameleon from the Livingstone and Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania.
Kinyongia msuyae in life, Livingstone Mountains, Tanzania: adult male (upper), close up of male head (lower left), adult female (lower right). Image credit: Michele Menegon et al.
Dr. Menegon and co-authors proposed the scientific name Kinyongia msuyae for the newfound species.
“The species is named after and dedicated to Charles A. Msuya, a pioneer of Tanzanian herpetology, who collected the first known specimen attributable to this species and has spent most of his life studying Tanzanian wildlife,” they wrote in a paper published in the journal Acta Herpetologica.
Kinyongia msuyae is a small, elongated chameleon (about 16 cm long), lacking distinctive colors or pattern.
“K. msuyae is an overall brown to green chameleon, sometimes with broad pale transversal bands and scattered blue spots formed by single scales or clusters of several scales,” the scientists wrote.
“Females have often a larger round spot of contrasting color on the flanks.”
“The tip of the snout, rostral appendage and limbs and top of the casque are often brownish to grey.”
The new species is known from only four forest fragments of which two are in the Udzungwa and two in the Livingstone Mountains.
Its discovery sheds more light on a region called the Makambako Gap, a supposed zoological barrier between the distinct faunas of the Southern Highlands and Eastern Arc Mountains, according to the team.
“It is very clear now that the so-called Makambako Gap doesn’t exist zoologically, and that the Southern Highlands is every bit as biodiverse and endemic-rich as all other Eastern Arc Mountains,” Dr. Menegon and his colleagues said.
“With its own unique fauna and flora the region thus warrants as much protection as we can possibly afford it.”
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Michele Menegon et al. 2015. A new species of Chameleon (Sauria: Chamaeleonidae: Kinyongia) highlights the biological affinities between the Southern Highlands and Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania. Acta Herpetologica 10 (2): 111-120; doi: 10.13128/Acta_Herpetol-17171
