Have you heard of snakes in the genus Atractus? They’re the largest snake genus in the world, and recently they received three new members found in an unexpected place. In this episode, Alejandro Arteaga shares the story of how he and his team found three new species of fossorial snakes in the Andes mountains of Ecuador, and what this discovery has to say about the conservation of biodiversity in this unique region of the world.

Alejandro Arteaga’s paper “Leaving no stone unturned: three additional new species of Atractus ground snakes (Serpentes, Colubridae) from Ecuador discovered using a biogeographical approach” is in the September 15th issue of Zookeys.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1121.89539

New Species: Atractus discovery, Atractus zgap, and Atractus michaelsabini

Episode image courtesy of Alejandro Arteaga

For more coverage of Ale and his work, check out the Khamai foundation’s press release: https://www.khamai.bio/news/three_new_ground_snakes.html

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Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

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