I shall soon be traveling to Malaysian Borneo, I intend to try to find as many amphibian and reptile species as I can whilst I'm out there. I was wondering if anyone was aware of a published checklist of all of Sandakan's reptile and amphibians.
Dear Steven,
You can take a look at this publication:
Das, I. (2003) Collecting in the "Land Below the Wind". Herpetological explorations of Borneo. Bonner Zoologische Beiträge 52: 231-243.
and its extensive list of references, including field guides.
Best regards,
Aleksandar
The closest to what you are looking for is an overview in Dutch of the herpetofauna of Deramakot Forest Reserve by Malkmus et al. (1999; attached). So you should definitely write up and publish your observations!
Yes, the Das paper is a nice historical overview but provides little specifics. Guides are numerous to aid identification but, again, these do not contain detailed information about distribution. For snakes, Robert Stuebing’s 1991 checklist (Raffles Bull. Zool. 39) with its 1994 additions (Raffles Bull. Zool. 42) is a good start, mentioning actual locality data. You might be interested to know that at least three species of reptiles, the skink Sphenomorphus sabanus and the snakes Calamaria prakkei and C. suluensis have Sandakan (Bay or District) as their type locality (all three have a much wider range, though).
A quick search in Google Scholar revealed quite a few papers that covered amphibiand and or reptiles of Sandakan. I can get PDFs for you if that is a concern. Also, check with the Curator of Herpetology at the Chicago Field Museum. They have an enormous collection of herps from that region (Inger's work).
Hey Gordon, I too have found a few papers but I was looking for more of a concise list with a dichotomous key/photos so I could identify what I have found when I'm out there. It looks like I might just have to pool my resources and make my own rough guide using multiple sources such as the ones listed above and others found through searching.
Such a list might be available from Chicago. Indeed, for that part of the world YOU might have to be the one to assemble such a checklist. Did you check in with Peter Uetz from Reptile Database. He is a great resource. Good luck!
A quite recent review (2014) Zakaria et al. Check List 10(2): 335–343, © 2014 Check List and Authors, ISSN 1809-127X contains several citations which may be useful. Is can be downloaded at www.checklist.org.br. Cheers.
http://www.forest.sabah.gov.my/tangkulap/PDF/FieldGuideForAmphibian_TurtleDeramakotForestReserve.pdf
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