Zambian Wildlife and Bletherings therein: Synanthrope

Showing posts with label Synanthrope. Show all posts

Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Trachylepis striata (Peters, 1844)

I know that World Sparrow Day is supposed to be about Synanthropic (read - urbanisation-tolerant) birds, but I'm just trying to be a bit topical, which is why I'm going to throw in this:

Photographed in Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia in August 2011, using Olympus E-420 with Zuiko 40-150mm lens and 2 KOOD magnifiers.

Over most of Lusaka, and a hefty portion of central and southern Africa, this is the outdoor lizard of urban habitats, which makes it a little surprising that my dictionary of Chewa and Nyanja has no word for 'Skink', beyond the generic lizard 'Buluzi'. Unlike the formerly successful bleuskops and goggomanikes (tree and ground agamas, respectively, but my spelling is probably wrong) these lizards are quick enough to flee, and to breed, that their populations can survive that nemesis of urban biodiversity, the domestic cat (please, people, keep them under control. Would you let a dog or a hamster wander into other people's gardens and across roads? No, no you would not. So why would you let your cat terrorise everything?).

And yes, that sentence is rather tangled. Parentheses have ruined my fluidity.

Anyhow, this little chappie is:

Trachylepis striata wahlbergi

(Peters, 1869)

And, despite being capable of delivering a sharp pinch with is blunt-toothed jaw, it is harmless. It's also fond of eating just about everything smaller than it, be they houseflies, crickets, ants, spiders, or even small frogs and lizards. This one is part of a population around a dried-out reservoir that co-habits with and occasionally snacks upon the much smaller Trachylepis varia (link is to post from Aug 13). They are generally seen vanishing into cracks in walls within areas where catapults are a common toy (I'll refrain from ranting, but just DON'T give small children projectile weapons. It shows a complete lack of foresight and environmental conscience, among other things), and watching lazily from walls where catapults are rare. They don't cope all that well with plastic buckets being left upright and unchecked close to walls, or smooth-sided cardboard, so be considerate, and check these regularly to avoid finding lizards dehydrated to death.

To encourage them: ensure that there are raised surfaces, such as logs, rocks or walls, close to extensive hiding places. Most urban gardens provide this anyway. Discourage cats, and do not use pesticides. These little fellows - along with the aforementioned agamas - are actually very good at keeping most pest insects below damaging levels, provided they're not being poisoned.

Here's a more complete (with the exception of the damaged tail) photograph of Lusaka's most abundant skink:

Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, October 2011, Olympus E-420 with 40-150mm lens and 1 KOOD magnifier.

And with that, let's get on with the taxonomy:

- Lygosominae

Larus argentatus, Pontoppidan, 1763.

So here's a second synanthrope for the day:

Juvenile, Brighton, East Sussex, U.K, in July 2012, using Olympus E-420 and Zuiko 70-300mm lens.

This is a member of the most frequently cited example of species ring - essentially, when a more-or-less continuous band of a specific environment exists (as in the near-arctic and arctic coasts of Europe, America and Asia) - a species that becomes adapted to that specific environment will eventually spread through and colonise the whole area but, if the ring is large enough that genetic flow between populations are incomplete, then genetic drift can cause the two ends to be genetically incompatible when they eventually close the ring.

This particular ring closes in the UK, which is probably why it's so frequently cited, with the Lesser black-backed gull, and the silver-backed, or Herring gull,

Larus argentatus

(Pontoppidan, 1763)

Which, when it grows up, should look like these little fellows from Priory Park in Chichester, West Sussex, UK:

Photographed in Priory Park, Chichester, West Sussex, UK, in January 2012, using Olympus E-420 and 40-150mm Zuiko lens.

And it belongs to:

- Laridae

-Lari

Stigmatopelia senegalensis (Linneaus, 1766)

(slightly early) Happy World Sparrow Day!

For those who don't know, the 20th of March (which it already is in some places) has been celebrated since 2010 NOT in the same way as other bird-associated days where the bird gets eaten/killed, but to raise awareness and rejuvenate affection for synanthropic bird species around the world, particularly the cosmopolitan (but, N.B., declining, House Sparrow, Passer domesticus).

This is not a house sparrow:

Photographed in the city of Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in January 2014. Olympus E-420, with 70-300mm Zuiko lens.

This is quite a different synanthrope*, the African Laughing Dove, Laughing Turtle Dove, or just Laughing Dove in English, Msekankhunda in Chewa and Rooiborsduifie in Afrikaans... I would try and find out what it's called in Arabic, but my complete failure to comprehend

As with most doves, it feeds primarily on seeds and fruit, but will chow down unsuspecting insects (in particular the winged termite reproductives, or Inswa in Nyanja, that emerge in Zambia's rains seem to tempt all normally herbivorous birds to spice up their diets), and has been seen (not by me) taking nectar from flowers.

In theory, it is a tree-nesting bird, although this particular individual was very much involved with a nest in the support of a poolside umbrella. In Lusaka, where they are eaten, they are very retiring and mostly seen in walled gardens, but in Dubai, they seemed quite comfortable with slow-moving humans mere feet away from them, and walk along the streets amongst the much more widespread rock doves (the wild ancestor of the now cosmopolitan feral pigeon, Columba livia).

Its binomial is a bit mixed up: Carl Linneaus, the Swiss Big-Daddy of naming everything, called it Columba senegalensis in 1766, but in the 1800s, Sundevall (Another Carl, but this time Swedish), put it in Stigmatopelia (and, as is relevant, a similar species in Spilopelia). A while later, they were put into Streptopelia (in the 1990s, I think) by Sibley and Munroe (Sibley is perhaps most famous for one of the earliest truly ambitious attempts at a molecular phylogeny of birds - that is to say, looking at selectively neutral changes in long-chain molecules of the cell. Much of Sibley (and Alquist)'s phylogeny is now disputed, particularly since the rather more intuitive and somewhat more rigorous study by Hackett and friends in 2008). However, since then, it's been pointed out that this and another species aren't all that closely related to the rest of Streptopelia, and so the genus that Sundevall originally assigned them to has been resurrected.

The problem is that these two closely related species were given a genus each by Mr. Sundevall (typical ornithologist, oversplitting). Traditionally, the one used earlier would be used for both (Stigmatopelia), but he used them both in the same paper and, by all accounts, there weren't all that many words between them. Spilopelia was used more widely between Sundevall and Sibley, and so - excusing their sticking with what they're used to by an ICZN nomenclature exception (which yes, is essentially meaningless), these poor doves are currently being torn between two genera.

The IUCN uses Stigmatopelia, though, and have I mentioned that I love the IUCN? So, with ramble over, this is (for me and the IUCN, at least),

Stigmatopelia senegalensis

(Linnaeus, 1766)

- Columbinae

- Columbidae

Introductory Blether.

Welcome, and stuff.

If you're one of those strange people that don't like seeing pictures of invertebrates or small vertebrates, well done for coming here - although if it was by accident, you may wish to leave. There's lots of text, which may or may not interest you, and no consistent format. Because life's family tree is awesome, there is a nod to this in the organiser, which is a taxonomic "contents" page updated less frequently than it should be.

Also, while most of what you'll see on this blog is Zambian wildlife, occasional posts feature animals from other countries, and sometimes these are not wild. This is noted in the text.

Zambian Wildlife and Bletherings therein

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Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Trachylepis striata (Peters, 1844)

Larus argentatus, Pontoppidan, 1763.

Stigmatopelia senegalensis (Linneaus, 1766)

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