Philipp Wagner

Villanova University | Nova · Department of Biology

Ex situ conservation breeding is increasingly used to prevent the extinction of threatened bird species. Cambodia is home to the highly threatened white-shouldered ibis Pseudibis davisoni. With support from government authorities, the Angkor Centre for Conservation of Biodiversity has developed an ex situ population of the species based on rescued...

Although enrichment is an essential part of modern zoo animal husbandry, research on effective enrichment for small mammals is scarce, albeit they are regularly kept in zoos. To develop solutions that are inexpensive, readily applicable, and adaptable for a variety of species, we investigate whether three types of simple enrichment devices (SEDs) –...

In a recent molecular study, the pygmy chameleon Rhampholeon boulengeri Steindachner, 1911 was shown to contain six genetically distinct, but phenotypically cryptic lineages. Phylogenetic analyses of genetic data demonstrated that several well-supported clades occurred in non-overlapping elevational ranges across the Albertine Rift in Central Afric...

Observations of ex-situ populations represent valuable resources for comparing data of captive and free-ranging populations and provide useful information to enhance species management and welfare. In this study, the African penguin Spheniscus demersus, listed as Endangered by the IUCN, serves as a model to evaluate adult moult phenology at Allwett...

Environmental factors, such as temperature, precipitation, and elevation, explain most of the variation in species richness at the global scale. Nevertheless, richness patterns may have different drivers across taxa and regions. To date, a comprehensive global examination of how various factors such as climate or topography drive patterns of specie...

The Asian box turtles of the Cuora galbinifrons complex (C. galbinifrons, C. bourreti, and C. picturata) rank among the most endangered chelonian species in the world. Despite several previous studies, the phylogenetic relationships and species boundaries of this complex remain a matter for dispute due to a shortage of field-collected samples for g...

Systematic assessments of species extinction risk at regular intervals are necessary for informing conservation action1,2. Ongoing developments in taxonomy, threatening processes and research further underscore the need for reassessment3,4. Here we report the findings of the second Global Amphibian Assessment, evaluating 8,011 species for the Inter...

Systematic assessments of species extinction risk at regular intervals are necessary for informing conservation action1,2. Ongoing developments in taxonomy, threatening processes and research further underscore the need for reassessment3,4. Here we report the findings of the second Global Amphibian Assessment, evaluating 8,011 species for the Inter...

Turtles and tortoises are one of the world's most threatened vertebrates; more than half of the 352 currently rec-ognised species are threatened. To implement the IUCN CPSG's One Plan Approach to Conservation, we herein analyse the available information from the Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS) to provide an overview of the species a...

Protected Areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. Here, we collated distributional data for >14,000 (~70% of) species of amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) to perform a global assessment of the conserva- tion effectiveness of PAs using species distribution models. Our analyses reveal that >91% of herpetofauna species are c...

Aim Viviparity has evolved more times in squamates than in any other vertebrate group; therefore, squamates offer an excellent model system in which to study the patterns, drivers and implications of reproductive mode evolution. Based on current species distributions, we examined three selective forces hypothesized to drive the evolution of squamat...

Identifying species with unusually low cancer prevalence can provide new insights into cancer resistance. Most studies have focused on mammals, but the genetic, physiological, and ecological diversity among vertebrates can influence cancer susceptibility. We used necropsies from over a thousand species of amphibians, birds, crocodilians, mammals, s...

The Tonlé Sap Lake is a rich ecosystem although many of its aquatic species have been depleted by overharvesting. We assessed the quantity and composition of watersnakes unintentionally caught during routine fi shing practices by exam�ining individuals in the bycatch of a fisherman and sold by a snake trader each day for ten days in Kampong Khleang...

Comprehensive assessments of species’ extinction risks have documented the extinction crisis and underpinned strategies for reducing those risks. Global assessments reveal that, among tetrapods, 40.7% of amphibians, 25.4% of mammals and 13.6% of birds are threatened with extinction. Because global assessments have been lacking, reptiles have been o...

Comprehensive assessments of species’ extinction risks have documented the extinction crisis and underpinned strategies for reducing those risks. Global assessments reveal that, among tetrapods, 40.7% of amphibians, 25.4% of mammals and 13.6% of birds are threatened with extinction. Because global assessments have been lacking, reptiles have been o...

We examined the taxonomy of the minute desert geckos of the Tropiocolotes nattereri species complex using the largest morphological sampling, and the first molecular assessment of intraspecific diversity within this complex. We examined variation in mitochondrial and nuclear markers (12S, ND2, c-mos and MC1R) of 30 samples and analyzed the external...

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...

Situated at the junction of three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean is an ideal region to study the effects of palaeogeography, ecology and long human presence on animal evolution. Laudakia stellio (Squamata: Agamidae) is found across this region and offers an excellent opportunity for such studies. The high morphologic...

We describe a new species of the agamid genus Acanthocercus from Namibia and Angola, based on morphological and molecular evidence. The phylogenetic analysis of a fragment of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene suggests that the new species is closely related to the other taxa from southern Africa and is distinct from species from eastern and northeast...

The integrated results of maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) analyses, principal component analyses (PCA), and a multiple factor analysis (MFA) recover a new, widely allopatric species of the Cyrtodactylus intermedius species group. Cyrtodactylus kulenensis sp. nov is endemic to the Phnom Kulen sandstone massif of the Phnom Kulen N...

The first amber-embedded fossil representing the lizard family Agamidae, Protodraco monocoli gen. et sp. nov., is described in burmite of the lowermost Cenomanian (ca. 99 Ma; mid-Cretaceous) from northern Myanmar. It is among both the oldest known amber lizards and the oldest fossils of the family. The fossil is a well preserved left hind foot with...

The Asian box turtle genus Cuora currently comprises 13 species with a wide distribution in Southeast Asia, including China and the islands of Indonesia and Philippines. The populations of these species are rapidly declining due to human pressure, including pollution, habitat loss, and harvesting for food consumption. Notably, the IUCN Red List ide...

The white-shouldered ibis (Pseudibis davisoni) is considered to be one of the most threatened large water bird species in Southeast Asia. Once widespread throughout Southeast Asia, now up to 95% of the 670 remaining mature individuals are limited to a few sites in Cam-bodia. The primary cause for decline lays in destruction of habitats, such as dip...

Ancient amphibians preserved in amber Extant amphibians are represented by three fairly simple morphologies: the mostly hopping frogs and toads, the low-crawling salamanders, and the limbless caecilians. Until the early Pleistocene—and for more than 165 million years—there was another group, the albanerpetontids. We know little about this group bec...

Telomeres are nucleoprotein complexes protecting chromosome ends in most eukaryotic organisms. In addition to chromosome ends, telomeric-like motifs can be accumulated in centromeric, pericentromeric and intermediate (i.e., between centromeres and telomeres) positions as so-called interstitial telomeric repeats (ITRs). We mapped the distribution of...

Aim Understanding the mechanisms determining species richness is a primary goal of biogeography. Richness patterns of sub‐groups within a taxon are usually assumed to be driven by similar processes. However, if richness of distinct ecological strategies respond differently to the same processes, inferences made for an entire taxon may be misleading...

We report the fi ndings of the fi rst herpetofaunal surveys conducted in Phnom Kulen National Park, Siem Reap Province, northern Cambodia. During three intensive survey periods in 2008, 2009 and 2011, 86 species (25 amphibians and 61 reptiles) were recorded and data on their natural history were collected. One of the species, Kaloula mediolineata S...

Aim: Variation in body size across animal species underlies most ecological and evolutionary processes shaping local‐ and large‐scale patterns of biodiversity. For well over a century, climatic factors have been regarded as primary sources of natural selection on animal body size, and hypotheses such as Bergmann's rule (the increase of body size wi...

We report the fi ndings of the fi rst herpetofaunal surveys conducted in Phnom Kulen National Park, Siem Reap Province, northern Cambodia. During three intensive survey periods in 2008, 2009 and 2011, 86 species (25 amphibians and 61 reptiles) were recorded and data on their natural history were collected. One of the species, Kaloula mediolineata S...

Jackson's Forest Lizard (Adolfus jacksoni) is widespread throughout the highlands of the Albertine Rift, southern Uganda, western and central Kenya, and northern Tanzania. To understand the population genetics and phylogenetic relationships of this widespread taxon, we sequenced two mitochondrial (16S and cyt b) and two nuclear (c-mos and RAG1) gen...

Despite extensive research on ecological community compositions, general patterns across large-scale environmental gradients have remained unclear. A widely used explanatory model is the stress dominance hypothesis (SDH), predicting that the relative influence of environmental filtering is greater in stressful habitats while competition is more imp...

We identify a presumed specimen of Sphaerodactylus in amber from the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig as being embedded in copal, rather than amber. Further, the specimen matches the morphology not of a Hispa-niolan gecko, but of the extant Madagascan species Ebenavia boettgeri, which occurs in a known area of copal deposits. © 2018 Zool...

We present the first integrative review of the African agamid lizard Acanthocercus atricollis, a broadly distributed species found from Ethiopia through East Africa to Angola and South Africa. Since the original description of the species approximately 170 years ago six subspecies have been described, mainly on the basis of coloration characters. O...

Taxonomy is a scientific discipline that has provided the universal naming and classification system of biodiversity for centuries and continues effectively to accommodate new knowledge. A recent publication by Garnett and Christidis [1] expressed concerns regarding the difficulty that taxonomic changes represent for conservation efforts and propos...

p>In the version of this Article originally published, grant no. 2015/20215-7 for C.N. was omitted from the Acknowledgements section. This has now been corrected in all versions of the Article.</p

Aim: Small geographic ranges make species especially prone to extinction from anthropogenic disturbances or natural stochastic events. We assemble and analyse a comprehensive dataset of all the world's lizard species and identify the species with the smallest ranges—those known only from their type localities. We compare them to wide-ranging specie...

The distributions of amphibians, birds and mammals have underpinned global and local conservation priorities, and have been fundamental to our understanding of the determinants of global biodiversity. In contrast, the global distributions of reptiles, representing a third of terrestrial vertebrate diversity, have been unavailable. This prevented th...

In this Article originally published, owing to a technical error, the author ‘Laurent Chirio’ was mistakenly designated as a corresponding author in the HTML version, the PDF was correct. This error has now been corrected in the HTML version. Further, in Supplementary Table 3, the authors misspelt the surname of ‘Danny Meirte’; this file has now be...

Aim Lizards are ancestrally diurnal, and most of them remain so. Nocturnality is common among lizards, but the environmental factors associated with lizard nocturnal activity are still unknown. Here, we contrasted the ambient temperature and productivity hypotheses, where we predicted that cold temperatures will pose a stonger limit to nocturnal sp...

Background: The Indian Tectonic Plate split from Gondwanaland approximately 120 MYA and set the Indian subcontinent on a ~ 100 million year collision course with Eurasia. Many phylogenetic studies have demonstrated the Indian subcontinent brought with it an array of endemic faunas that evolved in situ during its journey, suggesting this isolated s...

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 savannah and tropical forest biomes of Africa have a long history of expansion and contraction, and the recent and rapid spread of dry savannah habitats has influenced the spatial and temporal diversification of vertebrate taxa across this region. We used a combination of species tree and phylogeographic methods to describe the spatio-temporal...

To what extent deep-time dispersal limitation shapes present-day biodiversity at broad spatial scales remains elusive. Here, we compiled a continental dataset on the distributions of African lizard species in the reptile subfamily Agaminae (a relatively young, Neogene radiation of agamid lizards which ancestors colonized Africa from the Arabian pen...