Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
Single word	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Ichthyophis longicephalus Pillai, 1986

Class: Amphibia > Order: Gymnophiona > Family: Ichthyophiidae > Genus: Ichthyophis > Species: Ichthyophis longicephalus

Ichthyophis longicephalus Pillai, 1986, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, 84: 231. Holotype: ZSI-SRS 28, according to Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 23. Type locality: "Silent Valley, Kerala, S. India, alt. 1050 metres".

Epicrium longicephalum — Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 407.

English Names

Long-headed Caecilian (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 25; Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 67; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 130).

Yellow-spotted Caecilian (Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 80).

Long-headed Striped Caecilian (Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 16).

Distribution

Southwestern Karnataka, northern Kerala, and extreme west-central Tamil Nadu, southwestern India.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: India

Endemic: India

Comment

See accounts by Bhatta, 1998, J. Biosciences, Bangalore, 23: 73–85, Pillai and Ravichandran, 1999, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 172: 39-41, and Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 188-190. Ravichandran, 2004, Hamadryad, 28: 98-104, summarized range. Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 23, provided a brief account and noted that the other striped Ichthyophis in India are Ichthyophis beddomei, Ichthyophis glutinosus, and Ichthyophis tricolor. Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 80-82, provided an account. A brief characterization, photograph, and dot map provided by Subramanian, Dinesh, and Radhakrishnan, 2013, Atlas of Endemic Amph. W. Ghats: 182. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted no larval descriptions in the literature. Venu, Raju, Wilkinson, Browne, Varadh, Balakrishna, Ramakrishna, and Venkatachalaiah, 2020, J. Anim. Diversity, 2: 5–10, provided new records, comments on habitat, as well as a dot map. See comments by Kotharambath, Wilkinson, and Gower, 2024, J. Vert. Biol., Prague, 73: 1-12, regarding systematics and range.

External links:

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For additional information see AmphibiaWeb report
For information on conservation status and distribution see the IUCN Redlist
For information on distribution, habitat, and conservation see the Map of Life
For related information on conservation and images as well as observations see iNaturalist
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.