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 tricolor Annandale, 1909

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

Ichthyophis glutinosus tricolor Annandale, 1909, Rec. Indian Mus., 3: 286. Syntypes: Presumably ZSIC (2 specimens); Taylor, 1968, Caecilians of the World: 148, thought that there was a single type in the ZSIC, but he did not locate it there. Type locality: "at or near the base of the Western Ghats in the State of Travancore . . . . at Maddathorai in a hollow tree".

Ichthyophis tricolor — Taylor, 1968, Caecilians of the World: 148.

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

English Names

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

Three-colored Caecilian (Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 67; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 131).

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

Distribution

Known from a few localities in the Western Ghats of southeastern India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) with one isolated record in southwestern Karnataka.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: India

Endemic: India

Comment

See accounts by Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 27, Bhatta, 1998, J. Biosciences, Bangalore, 23: 73–85, Pillai and Ravichandran, 1999, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 172: 56–58, and Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 192. Gower, Bahir, Mapatuna, Pethiyagoda, Raheem, and Wilkinson, 2005, Raffles Bull. Zool., Suppl., 12: 153–161, noted that the nominal species may be composite. Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 86–87, provided an account and noted that some authors regarded Ichthyophis tricolor as a color variant of Ichthyophis beddomei. A brief characterization, photograph, and dot map (including a record for Karnataka) provided by Subramanian, Dinesh, and Radhakrishnan, 2013, Atlas of Endemic Amph. W. Ghats: 183. See also account by Bhatta, 1998, J. Biosciences, Bangalore, 23: 73–85. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted one larval description in the literature. 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 access to general information see Wikipedia
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To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank
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.