Herpetofauna of the eastern African forests - Biogeography and Ecology of the Rain Forests of Eastern Africa - page 175

the biologist with only a limited amount of ime
available. The idenificaion of specimens is often
fraught with difficulties; as noted above, little
revisionary work has been done on some of the
groups since the ime of Loveridge, and even
Schi0tz (1975) was unable to devise a workable
key to some forms of treefrogs. Three new species
of frogs from the easten forests have been named
since 1981 (Schi0tz, 1982; Grandison, 1983;
Grandison & Howell, 1983) and a new toad has
been described (Clarke, 1988a). Several new spe-
cies of repiles have also been described recently,
including two geckos (Perret, 1986) and a
chameleon (Klaver & Bohme, 1988) from the
Ulugurus and Uzungwas, a new skink from the
Uzungwas (Broadley, 1989) and a new gecko
from forest on Zanzibar (Pasteur & Broadley,
1988). References in the literature are scattered
and there is no field guide to either the
amphibians or the repiles of eastern Africa. This
contrasts sharply with the situaion in southern
Africa, where recent formal studies (Poynton &
Broadley, 1985a, b, 1987, 1988) as well as field
guides to the amphibians (Stewart, 196 7; Pass-
more & Carruthers, 1979), snakes (Broadley &
Cock, 1975) and repiles in general (Branch,
1988) are available.
Early collectors often simply labelled material
'Africa' and terms used then carried a meaning
different from that of today. 'Zanzibar' was
someimes used to mean the mainland coast
opposite that island and 'Tanga' could mean any
locality within 80 m of the town of that name,
including the Usambara mountains. Names of vil-
lages change over ime, and village sites are
abandoned. Several localiies separated by hun-
dreds of kilometres may have idenical names.
With the limitaions above kept in mind, data
from older records as well as from recent collect-
ing are incorporated with taxonomic changes
made since the ime of Loveridge's checklist
(Broadley & Howell, 1991; Frost, 1984; Schi0tz,
1975) in an examinaion of the distribuion pat-
terns of the herpetofauna of the eastern forests of
Africa.

Mehods

As already noted, the collecion and ideniicaion
of amphibians and repiles of the eastern African
forests pose numerous problems. In this chapter I
have drawn together published records from a
variety of sources, relying heavily, of course, on
the classic studies by Loveridge (summarised in
Loveridge, 1957). The work of Schi0tz (1975) on
treefrogs and Nussbaum (1985) on caecilians has
also been included. The sequence of amphibian
species names is that in Frost (1984) and of
repiles that of Broadley & Howell (1991).
My own collecing was done as other commit-
ments allowed. The following areas were col-
lected in varying intensiies: coastal forests, Pugu
Forest Reserve, Kiono Forest Reserve, Jozani
Forest Reserve; forests in the Eastern Arc moun-
tains, North Pare, East and West Usambaras,
Uluguru and Uzungwa; forests on mountains of
volcanic origin, Mount Meru, Ngorongoro Forest
Reserve. Numerous friends and colleagues also
assisted in collecing at many of the above locali.
ies and those it was impossible for me to visit,
including the Rondo Plateau and the Nguru,
Ukaguru and Rubeho mountains.
Any amphibians and repiles encountered dur-
ing walks in the forest were collected and/ or
noted, and likely hiding places were also invesi-
gated. Most of the collecing for anurans was
done at night by listening for vocalisaions and
visiing breeding sites.
Standard preservation techniques were used.
Idenificaions of specimens were confirmed by
various authorities as follows: anurans, Ms A. G.
C. Grandison (reired) and B. Clarke, Briish
Museum (Natural History), London; caecilians,
R. Nussbaum, Museum of Zooloy, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor; chameleons, A. F. Sim-
son, Briish Museum (Natural History), London;
other repiles, D. G. Broadley, Natural History
Museum of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo. Duplicate
specimens have been deposited in these insitu-
ions and in the collecion of the Deparment of
Zoology and Marine Biology, University of Dar es
Salaam. Since 1986, material has also been
deposited at the Califonia Academy of Sciences,
San Francisco.