Gabriela Bueno Bittencourt-Silva

Natural History Museum, London · Department of Life Sciences

Visual systems adapt to different light environments through several avenues including optical changes to the eye and neurological changes in how light signals are processed and interpreted. Spectral sensitivity can evolve via changes to visual pigments housed in the retinal photoreceptors through gene duplication and loss, differential and coexpre...

Recent biological surveys of ancient inselbergs in southern Malawi and northern Mozambique have led to the discovery and description of many species new to science, and overlapping centres of endemism across multiple taxa. Combining these endemic taxa with data on geology and climate, we propose the ‘South East Africa Montane Archipelago’ (SEAMA) a...

Records of biodiversity over time are important resources for assessing conservation priorities. However, such baseline data are missing for regions of key biodiversity importance. The Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania are known for their species richness and endemism, but not all mountain blocks have received the same attention. The Ukaguru Mounta...

Patterns and processes of cladogenesis among taxa living on the Mozambique ‘sky islands’ remain poorly studied. During the present study, we report on a new freshwater crab species from Mount Lico, an inselberg and ‘sky island’ in the Zambezia Province of Mozambique. Phylogenetic analyses using three mitochondrial DNA sequence loci (12S rRNA, 16S r...

The first herpetological surveys of two mountains in northern Mozambique, Mount Lico and Mount Socone, are presented. A total of 19 species of amphibians (two orders, eight families, and 11 genera) and 21 species of reptiles (two orders, 11 families, and 17 genera) were recorded. Mount Lico is a unique site with representatives of both moist evergr...

We studied the morphology, development, and the terminology of a lobe over the iris present in three genera of South American cycloramphid frogs (Cycloramphus, Thoropa, and Zachaenus). This research is based on dissections and a macroscopic survey of the eyes of tadpoles, post-metamorphosed, and adults of all six species of Thoropa, nine species of...

A list of 60 species of amphibians and reptiles found during a six-week survey in western Zambia is presented. Two species of amphibians are newly reported for Zambia: Amietia chapini and an undescribed species of Tomopterna, previously known to occur in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Namibia, respectively. Some of the material collected c...

A new species of tree snake Dipsadoboa montisilva Branch, Conradie & Tolley sp. nov. (Serpentes: Colubridae) is described from the ‘sky islands’ of Mount Mabu and Mount Ribáuè in northern Mozambique. Features of scalation, colour, body form and habitat distinguish the new species from other Dipsadoboa. This is supported by a phylogenetic analysis u...

Since 1984 there have been no records of Rhaebo colomai (Hoogmoed, 1985) within the territory of Ecuador. This species was known from 2 localities in the province of Carchi, northwestern Ecuador, and the department of Nariño, southwestern Colombia, which were reported in 1979 and 2015, respectively. We report the recent sightings of R. colomai at 3...

As their name suggests, caecilians of the genus Microcaecilia Taylor, 1968 are more diminutive than the species of many other Neotropical caecilian genera. New species descriptions (Wilkinson et al.

Nothophryne Poynton, 1963 is a monotypic genus of frog, with the nominal species N. broadleyi found only on Mount Mulanje, in southern Malawi. Recent surveys in northern Mozambique, however, have uncovered at least four new species associated with four inselbergs (Mount Inago, Mount Namuli, Mount Ribáuè and Taratibu Hills). Previous phylogenetic an...

Ecological niche models (ENMs) have been used in a wide range of ecological and evolutionary studies. In biogeographic studies these models have, among other things, helped in the discovery of new allopatric populations, and even new species. However, small sample sizes and questionable taxonomic delimitation can challenge models, often decreasing...

Amphibians are in decline globally due to increasing anthropogenic changes, and many species are at risk of extinction even before they are formally recognised. The Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa is a hotspot of amphibian diversity but is threatened by recent land use changes. Based on specimens collected in 2001 we identify a new species from t...

We carried out a survey of reptiles and amphibians within Afromontane forest and woodland slopes of three inselbergs in northern Mozambique (Mount Mabu, Mount Namuli, and Mount Ribáuè). A total of 56 species (22 amphibians and 34 reptiles) were recorded during the current survey. Our findings substantially increase the number of herpetofaunal speci...

The phylogenetic relationships of the African mongrel frog genus Nothophryne are poorly understood. We provide the first molecular assessment of the phylogenetic position of, and diversity within, this monotypic genus from across its range - the Afromontane regions of Malawi and Mozambique. Our analysis using a two-tiered phylogenetic approach allo...

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) is the causative agent of the disease amphibian chytridiomycosis, one of the factors driving amphibian population declines. Bd infections are treatable in at least some cases, but in the Gymnophiona has been little reported, and restricted to heat treatment in the form of increased environmental temperature. We r...

Significance Amphibians are among the most threatened animal groups. Population declines and extinctions have been linked, in part, to emerging infectious diseases. One such emerging disease has been attributed to Perkinsea-like protists causing mass mortality events in the United States. Using molecular methods, we evaluated the diversity of Perki...

New distribution record for a range-restricted species of Mertensophryne (Anura: Bufonidae)

We investigate the composition of anuran communities of land-bridge islands off the southeastern coast of Brazil. These islands provide natural long-term experiments on the effects of fragmentation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (BAF). We hypothesize that Pleistocene sea-level changes, in combination with other abiotic variables such as area and...

Herein we present the first lists of anuran species of five islands off the coast of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, and updated lists for two other islands (Ilha Grande and Ilha da Marambaia). These lists resulted from thorough searches of the literature and of herpetological collections databases, and from surveys on the islands conducted between M...

Among vertebrates, anuran amphibians represent the highest number of species associated with bromeliads and possess a range of ecological, behavioral, and morphological specializations to life in these plants. Despite the importance of bromeliads as biodiversity amplifiers, and their diversity in some habitats, studies of the relationship between a...

We report the results of a seven-year survey of the anurans of Marambaia, in the State of Rio de Janeiro, southeastern Brazil, where 24 species were recorded. The species represented nine families: Hylidae (10 species), Bufonidae (3), Leptodactylidae (3), Hylodidae (2), Microhylidae (2), Craugastoridae (1), Centrolenidae (1), Cycloramphidae (1), an...