Cape Town - In December 2014 a team of National Geographic researchers led by South Africa’s “Chameleon Lady”, Professor Krystal Tolley, headed to a remote area of Mozambique to search for new species.
And while they returned having discovered four new types of chameleon, the researchers were shocked to find these creatures were only just clinging to life in small patches of forest in a region decimated by fires to create space for subsistence farming.
Their destination was three “sky-islands”, the term scientists use for isolated mountains separated by savannah plains.
The forests on such mountains can contain unique animal species and the researchers were headed to some of the least studied in the north of that country, far from the tourist hubs in the south.
Tolley, of the South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi), led the seven-strong team.
She said most researchers avoided Mozambique during its decades-long civil war, only recently beginning to study its biodiversity.
The expedition used dirt bikes to reach the mountains, before clambering up the slopes with porters to make camp from where they explored the tops.
But, as Tolley noted at the time in the journal she kept for National Geographic, the scientists were in for a shock.
In many of the areas they visited, they found subsistence farming had wiped out forests, leaving only isolated patches between shambas, or subsistence farms.
“Each footfall threw up a cloud of ash, the landscape scattered with charred remains of the forest,” she wrote of the team’s ascent of Mount Ribàué, one of the three mountains they studied during their month-long trip.
“We could see fires burning at this level, the sign of forest being converted to shamba.”
But despite the environmental destruction, the team discovered four new chameleon species.
Tolley, who has studied chameleons since 2001, has made it her work to document new species of the small and vulnerable reptiles, especially where habitat destruction puts them at risk of extinction.
This week, in her office at the Kirstenbosch Research Centre, Tolley brought up a screen on her computer showing the DNA sequences for another newly discovered chameleon that stems from the Livingstone and Udzungwa mountains of Tanzania.
The species, Kinyongia msuyae, was discovered recently by researchers Colin Tilbury and Michele Menegon and described in the scientific journal Acta Herpetologica.
After the field researchers obtained tissue samples of the brown and green chameleon with scattered blue spots, they sent them to the Kirstenbosch centre for analysis.
For Tolley, a molecular biologist, one of the most satisfying parts of her job is confirming a new chameleon is indeed a species unknown to science.
“You really feel like you’re doing something, accomplishing something,” she said.
The Tanzanian chameleon, as well as new species from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and KwaZulu-Natal, show not only the richness of Africa’s biodiversity, but what the continent stands to lose given the habitat loss.
Chameleons, well known for their rapidly extrudable tongues and hesitant gait – whence the Afrikaans term trapsuutjie – are reptiles.
Most of the 203 species confirmed worldwide occur in Africa and Madagascar, with smaller numbers in southern Europe and Asia.
Tolley said the use of DNA sequencing for identification had helped scientists confirm new species.
Since 2000, nearly 50 new species had been discovered and there were more out there.
“I expect new species to come from everywhere in Africa,” said Tolley, adding that scientists were itching to get into unexplored regions of the DRC, Mozambique and Angola.
Later this year, Tolley intends to return to Mozambique to survey unexplored forests for chameleons, as well as other reptiles and amphibians.
But before she and colleagues return, she is planning an even more pressing trip to Malawi – to search for the world’s most rare chameleon.
Chapman’s Chameleon, a small chameleon with an oval body type that lets it mimic a leaf, was last seen in the wild in 1998. These chameleons were found only in a thin strip of forest in the Natundu Hills of Malawi which, like the sky-islands of Mozambique, are falling foul of subsistence farming.
“We don’t know if there are chameleons left,” said Tolley, bringing up an image on Google Earth showing a threadbare strip of forest on the spine of a mountain ridge.
She estimates this area of forest is less than one square kilometre.
To fund the trip, IUCN Chameleon Specialist Group used the crowdfunding site Rockethub, raising some $5 670 (R90 000), above the original goal of $5 000.
“We have no recent information to suggest whether the chameleon is still surviving in this tiny remnant of forest or not,” the crowdfunding proposal says.
If the researchers find no chameleons in the Natundu Hills, they will proceed to check if any have survived that were inadvertently moved to a nearby forest 20 years ago.
Tolley said if the chameleons were found, there would still be the difficult task of conserving them without affecting the livelihoods of local farmers.
As she wrote two years ago, after seeing the effect of shambas in Mozambique: “Time is running out very quickly.”
l A total of 19 species of chameleon occur in South Africa, including the Cape dwarf chameleon, whose natural habitat stretches from Cape Town to Hermanus.
l This small chameleon is listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.
l Their numbers have decreased due to habitat destruction and other pressures including, predation by domestic cats.
l Some chameleons are well-suited to living in urban gardens, but gardeners have to create the right conditions.
l This includes planting a variety of bushes that the 8cm-long green reptiles can cling to.
l The bushes must also attract insects, as this is the primary food source of chameleons. They catch the insects with their long projectile tongues.
l Lawns and insecticides are not good for these small reptiles.
l But for populations of chameleons to really thrive, homeowners should create ‘green corridors’ to link up gardens, giving the chameleons room to roam.
Weekend Argus