Jaime CulebrasPhoto Wildlife Tours
Jaime Culebras
Master of Science
Wildlife Photographer, Filmaker, Tour Leader and Researcher in Photo Wildlife Tours
About
43
Publications
42,012
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
254
Citations
Introduction
Researcher and wildlife photographer focused in threatened amphibians and reptiles, human-snake conflict and illegal wildlife trade.
Additional affiliations
July 2022 - present
Position
- Researcher
October 2021 - present
Fundación Cóndor Andino
Position
- Researcher
Publications
Publications (43)
Females of some species improve their reproductive success not only by being choosy and selecting males with certain traits, but also by sequentially mating with multiple males within one reproductive season. However, it is relatively unknown whether females also evaluate parental care during mate choice and, if they do, whether males actively comm...
Anomalous coloration is a phenomenon that is regularly observed in mammals. Cases of albinism are relatively uncommon; for example, they have been reported in less than 2 % of rodent species. For the first time, we report a case of albinism in a porcupine, based on a specimen collected in northwestern Ecuador. An injured Quichua Porcupine exhibitin...
Centrolenidae is a Neotropical family widely distributed in Central and South America, with its species richness concentrated in the tropical Andes. Several taxonomic problems have been identified within this family, mostly related to species with broad geographic distributions. In this study, we assessed and redefined the species boundaries of the...
The choice of where to breed can have fundamental consequences for offspring development and survival. In amphibians, desiccation is one of the biggest threats to survival, especially in species that deposit their clutches in terrestrial habitats. In several species, hydration of the clutch is ensured by a caregiving parent, but in species without...
The little-known glassfrog Cochranella litoralis (Ruiz-Carranza and Lynch 1996) is a Vulnerable (VU) species infrequently reported in the literature. Its purported distribution includes the departments of Cauca and Nariño, Colombia, and the provinces of Esmeraldas, Los Ríos, Pichincha, and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Ecuador. Due to conflicting...
One of the most extreme adaptations to terrestriality in anurans is direct development, where eggs from terrestrial clutches entirely circumvent an aquatic tadpole stage and directly develop into small froglets. We here report the first case of egg‐burying behaviour in a neotropical direct‐developing frog with subsequent short‐term maternal care. A...
ARTICLE Ongoing harlequin toad declines suggest the amphibian extinction crisis is still an emergency Biodiversity loss is extreme in amphibians. Despite ongoing conservation action, it is difficult to determine where we stand in overcoming their extinction crisis. Among the most threatened amphibians are the 131 Neotropical harlequin toads. Many o...
El Corredor Ecológico Llanganates-Sangay (CELS) se ubica entre los parques nacionales Llanganates y Sangay, en la parte central-oriental del Ecuador. El corredor fue declarado en el año 2002 como “regalo a la Tierra” por la WWF (Viteri 2002). Es una de las áreas consideradas como prioritarias para esfuerzos de conservación debido a su ubicación est...
Reportamos el primer evento de depredación del Basilisco de cabeza roja (Basiliscus galeritus) por la serpiente bejuquilla (Imantodes cenchoa) en un bosque húmedo tropical en Colombia. Este nuevo registro contribuye a una mejor comprensión de la historia natural y la ecología trófica de dos especies de reptiles en su interacción depredador-presa.
Anthropogenic biodiversity loss is extreme in amphibians. Despite ongoing conservation action, it is difficult to determine where we stand in overcoming their extinction crisis 1,2. Extinction risk is not equally distributed across amphibians 3-5. Among the most threatened amphibians are the 131 Neotropical harlequin toads (Atelopus), many of which...
We have added two new records (in Ecuador and Peru) and maximun altitude of the glass frog "Hyalinobatrachium iaspidiense"
Encontramos un individuo albino del género Pristimantis en los Andes ecuatorianos. Este es el primer caso de albinismo completo para anuros de desarrollo directo en el Neotrópico y el primer registro en anfibios para el Ecuador.
We found an albino individual of the genus Pristimantis in the Ecuadorian Andes. This is the first case of complete albin...
Background
The Tropical Andes is the world’s most biodiverse hotspot. This region contains >1,000 amphibian species, more than half of which are endemic. Herein we describe two new glassfrog species (Centrolenidae: Hyalinobatrachium ) that we discovered within relatively unexplored and isolated localities of the Ecuadorian Andes.
Methods
We employ...
This guide presents species of amphibians and reptiles found in an area of the Amazon rainforest, part of Belterra County, known as the Treviso farm. Amphibians and reptiles can be found in different habitats and are important bioindicators of environmental quality.
"Cochranella" megista is an Endangered and rarely encountered species of glass frog that, until now, had been only registered in the Colombian Andes. Here we report this species for the first time in Ecuador expanding its known distribution ca. 530 km south of its original range. Additionally, we include C. megista in a molecular phylogeny for the...
Herein we report the second known record of Emmochliophis fugleri Fritts & Smith, 1969, present the first color images of the species, extend its known distribution and elevational range, provide the snout-vent and tail lengths of the holotype, and demonstrate that the condition of fused prefrontals is an unreliable diagnostic character for the gen...
En este artículo, nuestro objetivo es aproximar la víbora más grande del mundo al público general. Tratamos la taxonomía, distribución, etimología, leyendas, historia natural (reproducción, defensa, comportamiento, actividad, presas y depredadores) y dirigimos por primera vez problemas de conservación, sugiriendo a Lachesis melanocephala como críti...
En este artículo, nuestro objetivo es aproximar la víbora más grande del mundo al público general. Tratamos la taxonomía, distribución, etimología, leyendas, historia natural (reproducción, defensa, comportamiento, actividad, presas y depredadores) y dirigimos por primera vez problemas de conservación, sugiriendo a Lachesis melanocephala como críti...
Short note on range expansion and lowest elevation record for Hyloscirtus mashpi.
We herein provide an overview of the bushmasters (Lachesis spp.), the longest vipers in the world. We address taxonomy, distribution, etymology, lore, natural history (reproduction, defense, behavior, activity, prey and predators), and, for the first time, conservation issues, suggesting that Lachesis melanocephala is a Critically Endangered specie...
With the third most biodiverse amphibian fauna in the world, Ecuador has bolstered this claim with a particularly high rate of species descriptions in recent years. Many of the species being described are already facing anthropogenic threats despite being discovered within privately protected reserves in areas previously not sampled. Herein we desc...
The recently established Río Manduriacu Reserve, located on the Andean slopes in northwestern Ecuador, has proven to be a site of high conservation importance for amphibians. It harbors a range of threatened species, including the only known population of the Critically Endangered Tandayapa Andes Toad, Rhaebo olallai, as well as those of two recent...
We have recorded for the first time the glass frog "Cochranella granulosa" for Ecuador, extending its distribution southward by approximately 950 km. Our finding increases the number of Ecuadorian glass frog species to 62.
Hyalinobatrachium is a behaviorally and morphologically conserved genus of Neotropical anurans, with several pending taxonomic problems. Using morphology, vocalizations, and DNA, a new species from the Amazonian lowlands of Ecuador is described and illustrated. The new species, Hyalinobatrachium yaku sp. n., is differentiated from all other congene...
Geographic barriers and elevational gradients have long been recognized as important in species diversification. Here, we illustrate an example where both mechanisms have shaped the genetic structure of the Neotropical rainfrog, Pristimantis ornatissimus, which has also resulted in speciation. This species was thought to be a single evolutionary li...
Results of the MMRR analysis.
The analysis uses species’ genetic distances and tests whether geographic and environmental dissimilarity influence genetic differentiation among populations. This alternative analysis uses the raw climatic variables rather than the axes from a PCA analysis. We assessed the 19 bioclimatic variables for multicolinearity...
Bayesian and maximum likelihood phylogenies of Pristimantis.
Support values are presented as bootstraps and posterior probabilities.
(TIFF)
The loadings from the three PC axes used for the MMRR analysis.
(DOCX)
List of species and corresponding GenBank numbers used to infer the Pristimantis phylogeny.
(DOCX)
Comparative phylogeography allow us to understand how shared historical circumstances have shaped the formation of lineages, by examining a broad spectrum of co-distributed populations of different taxa. However, these types of studies are scarce in the Neotropics, a region that is characterized by high diversity, complex geology, and poorly unders...
Ecological niche models (ENM) for the sampled sister-species pairs, and new species described in this study.
The Minimum Training Presence (MTP) threshold was used to validate the models; over-predicted areas east of the Andes are not shown.
(PDF)
Locality data for species included in this study.
In general, localities are given as transcribed from the literature, museum records, Tropical Herping photographic database or HerpNET. Coordinates represent georeferencing attempts from gazetteers under standard guidelines, though some variation from the exact collecting locality will inevitably be...
GenBank accession numbers for loci and terminals of taxa and outgroups sampled in this study.
Specimens for which novel sequence data was produced in this study are marked with an asterisk (*).
(DOCX)
Additional specimens examined.
(DOCX)
List of PCR and sequencing primers and their respective PCR conditions used in this study.
All PCR protocols included an initial 3-min step at 94°C and a final extension of 10 min at 72°C.
(DOCX)
We present a new molecular phylogeny of the stream treefrog genus Hyloscirtus, with an improved taxon sampling in the Hyloscirtus bogotensis group. The tree supports the existence of three clades within the genus (Hyloscirtus armatus group, H. bogotensis group and Hyloscirtus larinopygion group) in congruence with previous studies, and suggests the...
We describe a new frog, Pristimantis mutabilis sp. nov., from the Andes of Ecuador. Individuals of the new species are remarkable for their ability to change skin texture from tuberculate to almost smooth in a few minutes, being the first documented amphibian species to show such dramatic phenotypic plasticity. The new taxon is assigned to the P. m...