What's new? (January 2026)
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Happy New Year! 2026 started for us with a new release of the Reptile Database last week, 5 months after the previous version in September 2025 — and a bit later as planned. In any case, here is a summary of what’s new:
Literature database. We have added 1393 references to the database published in 2025, which now stands at 71,491 references (69,316 in January 2025). 782 papers have been added that were published before 2025. Literature curation is still a largely manual process which is why we need your help, especially if you have some coding (or prompt engineering) skills — we need to further automate literature imports, so let us know if you are interested in helping (and in learning some coding along the way).
How big is the herpetological literature? Part 2: What is your part in this? Following up on our request in the last newsletter, we are now looking for people who have published more than a 50 (or so) reptile papers. The question is: how many of your papers do we have in the database? Please take a look at our literature list, also available from our download page, and check how many of your reptile papers are in that list (note that about 1% of papers are cited with incomplete author lists, using "et al.” or “…” — simply because many of our sources provide only abbreviated citations; also, your name may be listed erroneously or misspelled etc.). Also, it is quite possible that a paper is in the downloadable spreadsheet but not in the online database (because the latter is centered around species while many papers are not, including papers about our database). Then send us a brief email stating your main area of research (e.g. ecology, taxonomy etc.) and the number or fraction of your papers that we missed, including any popular papers or paper that is only tangentially related to reptiles (but does deal with reptiles somehow). Obviously, we think that we are more or less complete for the taxonomic literature but certainly not for other areas. This will help us to estimate the overall fraction of the (recent) literature that we miss and in which areas. Thank you!
Dubious articles and predatory journals. Like everybody else, we encounter an increasing number of articles in dubious journals, often from predatory publishers. Although they are often easy to spot, based on their poor layout (and especially poor figures and photos), sometimes they are not — or only once you read them. Typically they already have suspicious journal names which appear to have been made up on the spot, e.g. the Western European Journal of Modern Experiments and Scientific Methods (WTF ??). We have now started adding a “dubious” flag to references, so they are easier to spot. You may argue that we should not even cite them but sometimes they may contain useful information, even though the authors themselves may not have realized that they fell for a predatory journal. Let us know if you come across such papers and we will flag them in future releases.
Photos: Over the past 5 months, we have added 319 photos of 146 species submitted by 43 photographers. The photo count stands at 24,068 photos of 6,898 species now. In our last release we had photos of 6,803 species, so we added photos of 95 species. We are almost certain that we will reach 7,000 species in our next release —please consider contributing a few photos for that goal by sending them to photos@reptile-database.org. Seven photographers submitted more than 10 photos this time around (in bold below). The (other) photographers this time were A.V. Pham (5), Andreas Nöllert (43), César Barrio-Amoros (25), Charles B. Grogan (1), Citeli et a. 2016 (1), Daniel Durán (5), Daniel Jablonski (27), Daniel Nungaray (1), Dongru et al. 2025 (2), Duvan Zambrano (1), Fred Kraus (2), Fred Parker (1), Gernot Vogel (16), Greg Sievert (64), Hanh Ngo (1), Henrik Bringsøe (9), Ian Fisher (3), J.H. Yang (1), Jackie Childers (4), Jairo H. Maldonado (1), Jakob Hallermann (8), John Matter (2), Juan C. Arredondo (1), Kurt van Wyk (2), Li Ding (3), Lutz Obelgönner (1), Manju Mahatara (1), Marco Antonio de Freitas (2), Milton Salazar-Saavedra (5), Orty Bourquin (11), Paul Freed (8), Peter Janzen (3), Peter Uetz (31), Rhys Chapman (4), Rishi Baral (5), S.P.Vijayakumar (1), T.R. Zhang (2), Teddy Angarita-Sierra (3), Timofey Zalutsky (3), Trivalairat et al. 2020 (3), Vladimir Turitsyn (1), Ximena López Goñi (4), Y.H. Xu (2). Thank you all!
Year of the genome: new reptile genomes. Last year was like a breakthrough year for reptile genomes. While the past 5 years each have had at least a few reptile genomes published, we reached about 250 genomes last year, with Colston et al. 2025 on about 100 draft genomes standing out. You can find most of them by simply searching the database for “genome” although that will include many mitochondrial genomes too.
9000 amphibians. By the way, our friends at the IUCN amphibian specialist group just reported that they have reached 9000 species of amphibians, so that there are more than 21,500 herp species now. At the current rate of description, there will be 10,000 amphibians in a few years. We hope that they do not go extinct as fast as they are described, which reminds us of ...
We welcome Nick (Wei Cheng Tan) as our new conservation editor. Nick is a postdoctoral ecologist for the Virtual Ecosystem project of Imperial College London. His research interests encompass the evolution of phenotypic diversity as well as the effects of climate and land use changes on biodiversity. Nick has a keen interest in herpetology and enjoys studying them in their natural environment. Nick will help us to post news about conservation-related topics in our newsletter and social media feeds. We think that we should report more about conservation issues, given the increasing human pressure on natural habitats and biodiversity. So, please expect more of this in the future and welcome Nick! Here is his first (totally subjective) selection of newsworthy notes:
Global reptile trade. Nearly 35% of the world’s 11,000+ reptile species are traded, with demand heavily skewed toward reptiles of large body sizes, habitat generalists, and insular endemics. Unsurprisingly, turtles and crocodiles face particularly high trade risk. The authors warn that many reptile trades remain unprotected by international regulations, with online trade records often underestimated, highlighting an urgent need for targeted monitoring and stricter measures to protect species. Source: Zhang, S. et al. (2025) Demand for small- and large-ranged reptiles in worldwide wildlife trade. Conservation Biology, e70095
Are you teaching herpetology? Are you a student of herpetology? We wonder how many people teach herpetology (and related classes) at the university level and how we can improve on herpetology classes. Let us know via this Google form. Can we develop some shared teaching materials? Examples are identification tools (using the Reptile Database, AI etc.), bioinformatics exercises (phylogenetics, genetics and genome sciences), ecology, citizen science (iNaturalist), comparative morphology resources, etc. We are planning to organize a zoom meeting after our next newsletter in May, so please let us know if you are interested in participating filling out a simple form. No obligation!
A graphical summary is available here, and a summary of the open questions here.
We will likely post a few more such quizzes on social media, so follow us on Facebook or one of the other sites (see below).
Mattison, Chris (2025) The Lives of Snakes: A Natural History of the World's Snakes. Princeton University Press, 288 pp. $24.50, with 30% discount). Almost 30 years after Harry Greene’s Snakes — The evolution of mystery in nature, Chris Mattison presents a beautifully illustrated and updated overview of snake biology. Although shorter and with much less text (but with a similar number of photos, Mattison covers morphology, ecology, reproduction, diet and feeding, enemies and defense, as well as their relationship to humans in one chapter each. The high-quality photos and selecting drawings (especially to illustrate the morphology) make the book ideal for non-experts. About 50 species are individually presented (on 2 pages each) as exemplars for their behavior, ecology, or evolutionary adaptations.
Teddy Angarita Sierra and Francisco Ruiz [eds.] (2024) Bites, Venoms, and Venomous Snakes of Colombia / first edition. Bogotá: Instituto Nacional de Salud, 2024. This is a comprehensive survey of the 54 or so species of vipers and coral snakes of Colombia. The books was written by a total fo 24 authors in 10 chapters, most of which concerned with venoms and snakebite. However, the first 3 chapters describe the taxonom of coral snakes and vipers in Colombia. The book is free to download at the link above.
Our next database release is scheduled for May/June 2026.
As always, if you have any corrections or additions, please email us.
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Created: 2 May 2020 / Last updated: as indicated on top