BHARATI PAWASKAR
A new scorpion species living on the plateaus of Amboli in Maharashtra and in Chorla Ghats of Goa and Karnataka has been discovered by a team of animal experts and researchers including Zeeshan Mirza, Mayuresh Ambekar and Nirmal Kulkarni. The research paper regarding this new discovery is published in the journal Arachnida.
“Since the species showed close resemblance to Hottentotta rugiscutis, a common Indian scorpioan, it has been named ‘Hottentotta vinchu’ in which the word ‘vinchu’ refers to the word scorpion in Marathi,” briefs Zeeshan who is currently in Arunachal Pradesh on an expedition along with a team of four other researchers while the fifth team-mate from the Forest Department will be joining them soon.
Based on morphological and molecular data this species was declared new. Morphologically it resembles Hottentotta rugiscutis (Pocock, 1897) from which it differs in having metasomal segment II wider than long in both sexes. The new species, however, is sister to Hottentotta pachyurus (Pocock, 1897) based on cytochrome oxidase I gene from which it differs in an unÂcorrected sequence divergence of 7%.
Passionate about snakes, scorpions and spiders since his childhood, this young animal expert and a researcher at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru, Zeeshan, has over 35 discoveries of new species to his name, the latest being a new species of scorpions found in the Western Ghats of India, at Amboli and Chorla.
Zeeshan recalls noticing this species for the first time when he visited Amboli in 2008. Thinking that it was a different type of scorpion, he photographed it and left. Later, in his multiple trips to Amboli, he found the species was still there. It was confirmed that it was different but this discovery did not get published in any scientific journal, as he did not have scientific technical data as proof then. Further research with the help of Nirmal Kulkarni in Chorla Ghats led to the discovery of the same species there too. Zeeshan kept working on the species for over a decade but it was only recently that one of the interns who teamed with him, Mayuresh Ambekar of the Department of Natural Sciences, Middlesex University, London UK, accumulated DNA data and compared it with the other scorpions and found that the species are different from the already known ones. With the DNA data in hand, this time, the discovery made it to the journals.
Zeeshan takes pride in sharing the credit with his team, Mayuresh and Nirmal. The team used morphology and molecular techniques to identify this new species and field work was carried out in evergreen forests of Amboli in Maharashtra and high altitude plateaus of Chorla Ghats in Goa and Maharashtra. These ‘Sada’ plateaus are unique high altitude unique ecosystems that need conservation as well as scientific attention.
Amboli receives 750 cm of annual rainfall and supports a variety of life forms which are still unexplored. This is clearly evident from the discovery of several new species of amphibians and reptiles in the recent past in addition to the present discovery. Several specimens of the new species were found on three different trips in different seasons. The species is common in the region and can be found in crevices in the culverts along roads and the broken down houses.
Zeeshan who grew up near Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai used to see snakes quite often as a child, but was petrified of them. That was until class five when he suddenly realised that he was only afraid of them because everybody else was. In class eight, he joined a nature club in his school and remembers being handed World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) pamphlets before a trip to a nearby forest.
Reading the pamphlet was the best thing he did as it was then that he got hooked to the snakes. He combed the internet, went out attempting to identify them in his neighbourhood and read all he could about them. Very quickly, he became somewhat of a local expert in snakes while he was still in school. Later he did a Bachelor’s degree in zoology in Mumbai and regularly travelled outside Mumbai to places known for their snake populations and educated the locals on how to identify the venomous varieties.
