By IANS
Bangalore : The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has discovered six species, including five insects and one fish in the vast Kudremukh National Park in the Western Ghats, about 330 km from here.
Though the species were identified for the first time during a 15-day survey of the park in October 2005, the ZSI took nearly two years to document the discoveries and compile information on them, including their nomenclature as per international norms, with the assistance of scientists.
“The fish, christened ‘Glyptothorax Kudremukhensis’, was found in the river Tunga stream that flows through the degraded forest area near Muduba in the park. It is a variety of fresh water catfish, measuring 33 mm long and yellowish in colour. It was found tucked beneath huge stones.”
“After comparing the speckled fish with 11 other specimen of the ‘Sisoridae’ family, it was found to be different,” ZSI additional director C. Radhakrishnan told reporters here late Wednesday, while releasing the faunal documents of three conservation areas in Karnataka.
The five new insects, traced in the Ghats, are parasites that feed on other insects. They were caught by using a ‘malaise trap’, similar to a mosquito net around a lamp, which attracts insects.
“We placed a bottle beneath the lamp to form the trap and catch the new insects. A microscopic study of them at our field research station in Kozhikode, Kerala, revealed they were different in structure and function,” Radhakrishnan said.
The survey also led the zoological scientists to rediscover a large wrinkled frog, which is endemic to the rain-forests of the Western Ghats.
“The native frog, unique to the rich bio-diverse region, was found on rocky boulders along streams. We have named it as ‘Nyctibatrachus Karnatakaensis’ for documentation and research,” Radhakrishnan said.
The ZSI also released a set of fauna documents pertaining to the Bannerghatta National Park on the outskirts of Bangalore and the Biligiri Rangaswamy temple wildlife sanctuary in Mysore district.
According to state principal chief conservator of forests A.K. Verma, the inventory of the fauna diversity across Karnataka has been compiled on the lines of a similar exercise taken earlier to record the wealth of flora in the 28 wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the state.
“Each of the documents has records of all known species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and insects, including many discovered for the first time,” Verma noted.