Bruna S. Santos

University of Porto | UP · Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO)

Three species of Phrynomantis Peters, 1867, have been historically recorded for Angola: P. affinis, P. annectens and P. bifasciatus. As noted by all authors who have dealt with specimens of P. bifasciatus from the country, the Angolan population is characterized by an odd coloration pattern for the species, which led Boulenger to consider it a diff...

Francisco Newton’s zoological expedition to Angola undertaken between 1903 and 1906 is one of the least studied of the naturalist’s life. Only three major papers regarding the herpetofauna collected in this expedition have been published, and a significant part of the specimens remains unstudied since the 1900’s. Here we review the extant herpetolo...

Natural History Collections (NHCs) represent the world’s largest repositories of long-term biodiversity datasets. Specimen collection and voucher deposition has been the backbone of NHCs since their inception, but recent decades have seen a drastic decline in rates of growth via active collecting. Amphibians and reptiles are amongst the most threat...

Historical and recent arrivals of crocodilians to the Gulf of Guinean Oceanic Island of São Tomé have intrigued naturalists for several centuries. Here we present the revision of the historical records, and present data regarding the recent arrival of a single specimen in 2021. After being killed by the local authorities, the specimen was preserved...

Two Portuguese institutions, the Museu Maynense da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa (ACL), and the Museu da Ciência da Universidade de Coimbra (MCUC), house a collection of 85 dried fish specimens prepared in what can be called a “fish-herbaria” following a process similar to that developed by the Dutch naturalist Johan Frederic Gronovius (1690– 176...

The Gulf of Guinea, in the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, has three oceanic islands that arose as part of the Cameroon Volcanic Line. From northeast to southwest these are Príncipe (139 km ² ), São Tomé (857 km ² ), and Annobón (17 km ² ). Although relatively close to the adjacent mainland, the islands have distinct climactic and geomorphologic...

The oceanic islands of the Gulf of Guinea (Príncipe, São Tomé, and Annobón) have been the focus of biological research for over two hundred years. Following small surveys that generated modest collections in the eighteenth and early mid-nineteenth century, European institutions commissioned several exploratory missions to the region that resulted i...

Recent integrative taxonomic studies of the agamid genus Acanthocercus Fitzinger, 1843 have shown that Angola harbors three different taxa, all within the Acanthocercus atricollis (Smith, 1849) species complex—A. cyanocephalus (Falk, 1925) in the northeastern parts of the country, A. margaritae Wagner et al. 2021 in the southern regions, and an unn...

Francisco Newton (1864–1909) was an important Portuguese naturalist who conducted several expeditions for more than 25 years during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and who greatly contributed to the study of Portuguese overseas colonies. In 1902, Newton was nominated to undertake a zoological survey of Angola, commissioned by the Ac...

Microplastics (MPs) are of environmental concern to marine ecosystems owing to the evidence of their presence in and adverse effects on organisms, but studies to address this problem on soils and its biota are scarce. Several questions can arise related to this major environmental problem and its impact on terrestrial ecosystems, mainly, whether MP...