Kirati Kunya's research while affiliated with Maharat Nakhon Ratchasima Hospital and other places

... They all are diurnal and arboreal species inhabiting forested areas and rang from southern China to northeastern India and southward to the tip of the Malay Peninsula (Ananjeva et al., 2008;Manthey, 2008;Grismer, 2011). The genus Acanthosaura currently contains 18 species (Ananjeva et al., 2020;Liu et al., 2020;Trivalairat et al., 2022;Uetz et al., 2022). Most of them were described recently, and the diversity of this genus may still be underestimated. ...

... We are currently studying the taxonomic status of three additional populations of Gehyra that probably represent additional new species from central and peninsular Thailand. We expect a much higher diversity in the genus Gehyra in the Indochinese Peninsula and the Thai-Malay Peninsula, and possibly a high level of endemism within karstic landscapes, as shown by other gecko genera such as Cnemaspis Strauch, Cyrtodactylus Gray and Dixonius Bauer, Good & Branch (Grismer et al. 2014(Grismer et al. , 2021Pauwels et al. 2021). ...

... Attachment scars of ectoparasites are also one of the most common diagnostics for the shell marks of extant freshwater turtles, mostly for shell pitting (e.g., [20,[67][68][69][70]). Among the potential parasitic organisms, Hirudinidae (leeches) are the most compatible agents with the circular and sub-circular shell marks observed in STUS 14024. ...

... Even in areas of higher elevation, habitats have supported diverse reptile communities (e.g., Chettri et al. 2010;Li et al. 2018). There have been records indicating that many living reptilian species are specific to mountainous areas in Thailand and adjacent regions; examples include the gekkonid lizards (e.g., Grismer et al. 2018;Grismer et al. 2020), various snakes (e.g., Teynié et al. 2015;Sumontha et al. 2020;Pauwels et al. 2021), and the long-horned lizards (e.g., Trivalairat et al. 2020). ...

... In recent years several snake species hitherto undescribed or unknown from the country have been found within Thailand's political boundaries Pauwels et al., 2017;Hauser, 2018;Smits and Hauser, 2019;Vogel and David, 2019;Sumontha et al., 2020;David et al., 2021;Pawangkhanant et al., 2021;Hauser et al., 2022). The addition of O. annamensis continues this trend of new discoveries and emphasizes that knowledge of the country's snake fauna is still far from complete, even in areas that have historically received attention from herpetologists. ...

... Bilateral scale counts were given as left/right. The methodology of measurements and meristic counts followed Liu and Rao (2021a, b): Morphological comparisons were based on the original descriptions of each species (Hoang et al. 2007;Bauer et al. 2009Bauer et al. , 2010Ngo and Grismer 2010;Nguyen et al. 2010Nguyen et al. , 2015bNguyen et al. , 2017Sumontha et al. 2010;Luu et al. 2011;Ngo 2011;Ngo and Chan 2011;Kunya et al. 2014;Nazarov et al. 2014;Nguyen et al. 2014;Schneider et al. 2014Schneider et al. , 2020Le 2016;Pham et al. 2019;Liu and Rao 2021a;Liu et al. 2021;Zhang et al. 2021). ...

... Measurements were taken with Mitutoyo ® dial callipers to the nearest 0.1 mm, we followed Grismer et al. (2012) by measuring 11 external body characters: snout-vent length (SVL), measured from the tip of snout to the cloaca opening; tail length (TailL), measured from the cloaca opening to the tip of the original tail; axilla to groin length (AGL), measured from the arm to groin, specimen in supine position; head length (HeadL), measured from the posterior margin of the retroarticular process of the lower jaw to the snout; head width (HeadW), maximum wide measured the angle of the jaws; head depth (HeadD), the maximum height of head measured from the top-tobottom side; eye diameter (EyeD), the greatest horizontal diameter of the eyeball; eye to ear distance (EyeEar), measured from the anterior edge of the ear opening to the posterior edge of the eyeball; eye to snout distance (EyeS), measured from anterior margin of the eye ball to the snout; eye to nostril distance (SnEye), measured between the anterior margin of the eyeball to the posterior margin of the nares; interorbital distance (InteroD), measured between the anterior edges of the orbit; ear length (EarL), the greatest length of the ear opening; and internarial distance (IN), measured between the nares. We counted the number of supralabials (SuL), number of infralabials (InL), number of dorsal tubercles (DT), number of paravertebral tubercles (PVT), number of ventral scales between lateral body folds at midbody (VS), number of pores at femoral (FP), number of pores at precloacal (PP), number of precloacal and femoral pores which continuous arranged (PFP), and number of subdigital lamellae under 4 th toe were counted following Bauer et al. (2010) under a stereoscope (AmScope, magnification 10x to 60x). All measurements and counts were taken on the right side. ...

... The control region can be divided into three domains: the extended termination associated sequences (ETAS) domain adjacent to the tRNA Tyr gene, where synthesis of the heavy (H) strand pauses at the level of the ETAS; the central conserved domain; and the CSB domain adjacent to the tRNA Phe gene, which contains the origin of the H strand replication, the two promoters, and the CSBs associated with initiation of H strand synthesis [71,72]. Our estimates of genetic diversity values in Asian elephants were high for CSB1, with approximately one-third of the variable sites between two haplogroups, similar to those of the snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina, Linnaeus, 1758), Thai bow-fingered gecko (Cyrtodactylus peguensis, Boulenger, 1893), and European mink (Mustela lutreola) [73][74][75]. This region also contains a specific nucleotide that differentiates between the α and β clades. ...

... They would therefore be considered as "piercing" specialists in the classification scheme as described in (Crofts et al., 2020), and should be associated with a restricted diet composed of soft invertebrates and small fish. Yet, as previously mentioned, snakes show a broad variety of diets, but also a wide variety of feeding behaviors that involve their teeth such as 'chewing' (Tumlison & Roberts, 2018), ripping (Bringsøe et al., 2020;Jayne et al., 2002;Noonloy et al., 2018), slicing (Cundall & Greene, 2000;Kojima et al., 2020), or swallowing without piercing (e.g. Dasypeltis sp. ). ...

... Our observa tions of the same specimen confirm the presence of deep ly bilobed hemipenes. In some later works Sumontha et al. 2017), O. macrurus was considered as part of the O. cinereus group, however such an alloca tion was not confirmed by any data and was an accidental mistake (P. David, pers comm). ...