Ichthyophis sikkimensis Taylor, 1960

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

Ichthyophis sikkimensis Taylor, 1960, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 40: 91–94. Holotype: CAS 64216, by original designation. Type locality: "Darjeeling, [West Bengal,] India".

English Names

Darjeeling Caecilian (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 25).

Sikkimese Caecilian (Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 67; Schleich, Anders, and Kästle, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 80; Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 135; Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 135).

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

Distribution

Sikkim and Darjeeling region of West Bengal, northern India; also Ilam District, eastern Nepal, and Palpa District of central Nepal; likely to extend into western Bhutan.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: India, Nepal

Likely/Controversially Present: Bhutan

Comment

See accounts by Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 28; Pillai and Ravichandran, 1999, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 172: 49–52; and Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 192–195. Anders, Kästle, Rai, and Schleich, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 340–348, provided an account, figure, and map, for the Nepal population. Dutta, 2003 "2002", Hamadryad, 27: 156, doubted the record from Kerala, suggesting a misidentification. Sarkar, Biswas, and Ray, 1992, State Fauna Ser., 3: 95, provided a brief account for West Bengal, India. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted no larval descriptions in the literature. Kamei, Wilkinson, Gower, and Biju, 2009, Zootaxa, 2267: 26–42, mapped the locality in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India. See Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 83, for brief account for Nepal. Wangyal, 2014, J. Bhutan Ecol. Soc., 1: 30, anticipated the discovery of this species in Bhutan. Gower, Giri, Kamei, Oommen, Khot, and Wilkinson, 2017, Herpetol. J., 27: 181–187, found that putative records from southern India were based on misidentified specimens. See Kamei, 2017, Das (ed.), Diversity Ecol. Amph. India: 49–72, for a review of this species. Not mentioned by Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 1–35, who discussed Nepal amphibians. Nepali and Singh, 2021, Reptiles & Amphibians, 28: 86–88, provided new records from the Palpa District of central Nepal.  

External links:

Please note: these links will take you to external websites not affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. We are not responsible for their content.