Michael F. Bates

• PhD
• Specialist Scientist and HOD Animal and Plant Systematics at National Museum, Bloemfontein

We report on the sympatric occurrence of three colour pattern morphs of the Common Egg-eater Dasypeltis scabra at a single locality in the northern Free State Province, central South Africa: typically patterned morph (grey-brown with dark brown vertebral saddles and lateral bars), 'plain' morph (brown with a dark vertebral stripe) and intermediate...

The puff adder (Bitis arietans) is widely distributed in Africa and south-western Arabia. Most published records for central South Africa and Lesotho are from surveys undertaken nearly 50 years ago, and although a large part of this area is considered well surveyed, existing occurrence records are sparse with several seemingly inexplicable gaps. He...

Diet record of a Puff Adder (Bitis arietans) which had preyed on a hare (genus Lepus).

Diet diversity and overlap was investigated in the sympatric skinks Trachylepis punctatissima and Trachylepis varia from central South Africa using stomach and intestinal contents of museum specimens. Simpson's Index and the Shannon-Wiener Index were used to determine their food niche breadths and Pianka's Index to determine the extent to which the...

Intraspecific variation in colour patterns may reflect adaptive responses to local environmental regimes that favour selection of different trade-offs between visual communication, thermoregulation, and anti-predatory functions. Understanding the drivers of colour pattern variation within species can therefore provide valuable insights about adapta...

Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species’ population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate ‘intactness scores’: the remaining proportion of...

Cordylus angolensis (Bocage, 1895) was described 128 years ago on the basis of a single specimen collected at Caconda in the west-central highlands of Angola. Additional specimens referred to this species were collected at ‘Mombolo’ (also in the central highlands) during the Vernay Angola Expedition in 1925. As the holotype was apparently destroyed...

Windhoek-born Wulf Dietrich Haacke’s career as a herpetologist while associated with the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria spanned more than 50 years. He passed away on 30 June 2021 at the age of 84. This tribute summarises various aspects of his life and achievements, and their significance to African herpetology, including his involvement with the Her...

The rinkhals (Hemachatus haemachatus) is a well-known venomous elapid found in greater South Africa and the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. To evaluate its current-day (mostly 2012–2021) distribution in central South Africa and Lesotho, we examined various media sources, including Facebook, for photographic and videographic records. Records were pos...

The Great Karoo and Namaqualand of South Africa are home to a species complex of morphologically conserved lizards that occur in allopatry (Karoo: Cordylus aridus, Cordylus cloetei, Cordylus minor; Namaqualand: Cordylus imkeae). However, there are negligible morphological differences and a lack of obvious physical or climatic barriers, particularly...

The genus Tetradactylus consists of eight species of serpentiform lizards, six of which are restricted to southern Africa (Bates et al., 2014; Branch, 1998) with two species in central and eastern Africa (Spawls et al., 2018). The various species are all serpentiform in appearance and exhibit a range of limb and digit reduction, from the short but...

Our knowledge of the conservation status of reptiles, the most diverse class of terrestrial vertebrates, has improved dramatically over the past decade, but still lags behind that of the other tetrapod groups. Here, we conduct the first comprehensive evaluation (~92% of the world's ~1714 described species) of the conservation 1 Joint senior authors...

William Roy Branch (1946–2018) was the most prolific Africa-based herpetologist of his era. His 659 herpetological contributions, spanning 47 years, include field and photographic guides, taxonomic revisions, phylogenies, ecological studies, annotated checklists, conservation assessments, type catalogues, notes on natural history, geographical dist...

London-born William Roy Branch spent nearly 50 years working as a herpetologist while associated with Port Elizabeth Museum. Bill, as he was known, passed away at home in Port Elizabeth on 14 October 2018, at the age of 72, after battling motor neurone disease. This tribute summarises various aspects of his life, his achievements, and their signifi...

A recent multilocus molecular phylogeny of the large dragon lizards of the genus Smaug Stanley et al. (2011) recovered a south-eastern clade of two relatively lightly-armoured, geographically-proximate species ( Smaug warreni (Boulenger, 1908) and S. barbertonensis (Van Dam, 1921)). Unexpectedly, S. barbertonensis was found to be paraphyletic, with...

Here we describe the invasion history in South Africa of the Common Dwarf Gecko Lygodactylus capensis (Smith, 1849), particularly into areas distant from its native range. We provide maps that include detailed records of translocations dating as far back as the early 1980s, describing the spread of populations through time. We find that this gecko...

Compared to the global average, extinction risk for mainland African reptiles, particularly for South Africa, appears to be relatively low. Despite this, African reptiles are under threat primarily due to habitat loss as a result of agriculture, resource extraction, and urbanisation, and these pressures are expected to increase into the future. Sou...

This species has an relatively small area of occupancy (AOO) of 56 km2, but because it is found in at least two widely separated subpopulations, the extent of occurrence (EOO) is 785 km2 in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The two subpopulations are mainly found within 100 m of the high water mark on the shore or along the river bank of the...

To substantiate the claim of a relationship between generation gland morphology and degree of body armour in cordylid lizards, we studied the nine species in the genus Smaug. We predicted that well armoured species in this clade will have multi-layer generation glands, and lightly armoured species two-layer glands. Gland type was determined using s...

The genus Dasypeltis Wagler, 1830 in north-eastern Africa (from latitude 8ºS to the Mediterranean Sea, east of 29°E) and south-western Arabia (west of longitude 45°E) is reviewed. Ten species are recognised in this region on the basis of morphological characters, including colour pattern. Dasypeltis fasciata A. Smith, 1849 inhabits lowland forest i...

English-born Donald George Broadley spent most of his adult life working as a herpetologist at two museums in Zimbabwe. His many taxonomic reviews and other publications made him one of the most respected experts on African reptiles and amphibians worldwide. Don passed away at home in Bulawayo on 10 March 2016. This obituary summarises, emphasises...

Donald G. Broadley was one of Africa’s most prolific recent authors. He produced over 410 articles, including numerous comprehensive and detailed taxonomic reviews of lizard and snake genera. A review of his scientific publications spanning over 50 years of herpetological research reveals three phases. The first (1958–1981) saw Don describe his fir...

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009;...

This plot is not part of the published stance but derives from it. The plot shows the number of authors by geographic region (courtesy of Dr. Diego Astua).

The girdled lizard genus Cordylus is represented in Angola by two species, Cordylus angolensis and C. machadoi, separated from their nearest congeners by over 700 km. Here we describe a new species, Cordylus namakuiyus sp. nov., endemic to the arid lowlands west of the southern Angolan escarpment. Phylogenetic analysis using three mitochondrial and...

Taxonomy of the Smaug warreni species complex remains contentious despite known morphological differences and geographical separation of the various taxa. This study uses an 11-gene dataset to recover phylogenetic relationships between the seven nominal members of the S. warreni complex. Eight well-supported clades were returned, with S. warreni ba...

A molecular phylogeny of the African plated lizards, genus Gerrhosaurus Wiegmann, 1828 (Squamata: Gerrhosauridae), with the description of two new genera Abstract We constructed a molecular phylogeny of the African plated lizard family Gerrhosauridae using two mitochondrial markers (ND2, 732 bp; 16S, 576 bp) and one nuclear marker (PRLR, 538 bp). T...

We provide evidence for predation by the Common Egg-eater (Dasypeltis scabra) on the eggs of three species of ground-nesting birds, namely African Pipit (Anthus cinnamomeus), Cape Longclaw (Macronyx capensis) and Common Quail (Coturnix coturnix). Although egg-eaters have been recorded as egg predators of several bird species in the wild – including...

Effective and targeted conservation action requires detailed information about species, their distribution, systematics and ecology as well as the distribution of threat processes which affect them. Knowledge of reptilian diversity remains surprisingly disparate, and innovative means of gaining rapid insight into the status of reptiles are needed i...

BATES M. & INEICH I., 2012 – A new size record for the West African egg-eating snake Dasypeltis gansi Trape & Mané, 2006, with new distribution records. African Journal of Herpetology, 28(3): 41-48.

New distribution records are provided for four species of amphisbaenians from Northern Cape Province, South Africa. We report on the third South African locality for Dalophia pistillum, representing the first record of the species from the Northern Cape and the most southerly record for the species. An amphisbaenian from the Kgalagadi Transfrontier...

Reptiles have often been excluded from conservation action and planning in southern Africa. This is partly because they tend to be unpopular with members of the public, but also because useful scientific information necessary for their effective conservation has been lacking or difficult to access. The Southern African Reptile Conservation Assess-m...

Four Tanzanian specimens of the patterned phase of Dasypeltis atra represent range extensions into savanna areas. One of these specimens, from Ibaya Camp in Mkomazi Game Reserve, extends the species’ range by about 100 km to the south‐east from Mount Kilimanjaro. It is suggested that the patterned colour phase of D. atra is an adaptation to making...

The most recent evaluation of morphological variation in Typhlosaurus caecus was based on only six specimens, including one from Port Nolloth here referred to T. vermis. We report on morphological variation in 25 T. caecus and 33 T. vermis from several localities within their known ranges. The two species are allopatric and distinguishable on the b...