After a long hiatus, a mysterious reptile has slithered back into the light. Researchers working in Ecuador’s tropical rainforests report that a Fugler’s shadow snake (Emmochliophis fugleri) has been found alive after more than five decades of absence from the scientific record.
In 2019, Ross Maynard and Scott Trageser, both conservation biologists at The Biodiversity Group in Arizona, were conducting amphibian and reptile surveys in the RĂo Manduriacu reserve on the Pacific-facing slopes of Ecuador’s Andes mountains. The two researchers were on a rainforest night hike when Trageser came across a small, dark snake wriggling next to some mossy boulders.
After catching the snake and getting a closer look, Maynard noted that despite his normally robust field identification skills, he was having trouble categorising the find. “This I definitely did not have on my radar,” he says.
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The snake was examined and photographed, then Maynard and his colleagues classified it as a Fugler’s shadow snake – only the second individual known, rediscovered 54 years after the first snake was collected in Ecuador.
E. fugleri and its presumed closest relatives are called shadow snakes for their dark colouration, nocturnal habits and secretive nature.
It is possible that the snakes have gone undetected for so long because they’re exceptionally rare or shy, says Maynard.
“I am totally surprised and excited about the discovery,” says ‪ThaĂs Guedes at the State University of MaranhĂŁo in Brazil, who wasn’t involved with the study. She adds that assessments of snake biodiversity have generally been neglected until recently.‬‬‬
“Snakes are some of the most secretive and hard to observe vertebrates out there,” says Sara Ruane at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who also wasn’t involved with the research. “No doubt there are other species where rediscovery awaits, although it is likely some species truly are extinct as well.”
In recent years, Colombia, Angola and Malaysia have all seen the rediscovery of local, long-lost snake species, says Ruane.
Notably, the only other Emmochliophis species (E. miops) re-emerged in Ecuador in 2017 after a 120-year absence.
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