New Information of Sri Lanka's Biodiversity:
New Vertebrate, invertebrate and plant Species were discovered from the island

Recently published "The Raffles Bulleting of Zoology" (June 2005), contains several research papers which presents details on the newly discovered species from Sri Lanka.
Rohan Pethiyagoda, of Wildlife Heritage Trust of Sri Lanka writes "A total of 43 new species of vertebrates are described from the island (one mammal, five geckos, two agamid lizards and 35 frogs), together with a new genus and a new species of shrimps, 14 new species of freshwater crabs and five mosses new to the island. Two further field studies demonstrate that diversity and endemism among both land snails and caecilians are significantly higher than previously suspected. These discoveries are not altogether unexpected, and indeed, are long overdue."

However, assessments of the conservation status of the freshwater crabs and agaimid lizards shows that 37 of 51 and 11 of 17 species respectively, are threatened. The status of the Amphibia is arguably worse still: the recently-concluded Global Amphibian Assessment (Stuart et aI., 2004) showed that 42 of Sri Lanka's current total of 94 amphibian species are threatened, and a further 19 extinct (i.e., 56% of the world total of 34 confirmed amphibian-species extinctions in the past five centuries). Two freshwater fish species too, appear to have become extinct in the past two decades (Pethiyagoda, 1994).

All 30 nominal species assigned to the shrub-frog genus Philautus Gistel, 1848 (Anura: Ranidae: Rhacophorinae) in Sri Lanka are reviewed by Manamendra-Arachchi and Pethiyagoda (2005), and their name-bearing types redescribed. Twenty-seven new species of Philautus endemic to Sri Lanka are described in this journal together with diagnoses and illustrations, and a key provided to all valid species in the island. As presently understood, the genus Philautus in Sri Lanka contains 57 nominal species, of which 52 are valid, four are junior subjective synonyms and one is incerte sedis.

Specific epithets of the Fifty seven Philautus species descibed in this paper are:

abundus adspersus alto, asankai auratus caeruleus cavirostris cuspis decoris dimbullae eximius extirpo femoralis fergusoni fergusonianus folicola fulvus fimbriatus

halyi hoipolloi hypomelas leucorhinus limbus lunatus macropus malcolmsmithi microtympanum nanus nasutus nemus ocularis oxyrhynchus papillosus pleurotaenia poecilopleurus popularis procax pulchellus

regius reticulatus rugatus rus sarasinorum schmarda semiruber silus silvaticus simba sordidus stellatus stictomerus temporalis variabilis viridis zal zimmeri zorro

The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 2005 Supliment No. 12: Contributions to Biodiversity exploration and research in Sri Lanka. Editors- Darren C. J. Yeo, Peter K L Ng and Rohan Pethiyagoda. Publishedf by Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 434 pp.