New species of legless amphibian discovered from Maharashtra

Scientists have discovered a new species of subterranean, legless amphibian — commonly known as a caecilian from Maharashtra.

The species named Gegeneophis chandgadi has been discovered by a multi-institutional team of researchers from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), WRC Pune, Yashwantrao Chavan Mahavidyalaya (Halkarni), Savitribai Phule Pune University, and the Mhadei Research Centre (Goa).

The details of the discovery have been published in a paper titled ‘Exploring cryptic diversity in Gegeneophis Peters (Amphibia:Gymnophiona:Grandisoniidae) with a novel species from the northern Western Ghats, Maharashtra, India’.

“In the present study, we describe a new species of Gegeneophis from the Kolhapur region (Chandgad) of the northern Western Ghats, Maharashtra, India. This taxon does not fit the descriptions of any known species,” the paper states. The team of scientists and researchers who are behind the discovery are Sahil Shikalgar, Rahul N. Patil, Pranjal Adhav, Nirmal U. Kulkarni, N. C. Hirgond, N. P. Gramapurohit, Basudev Tripathy, and K. P. Dinesh.

The species is named after the local Chandgadi dialect, and nomenclature pays tribute to the linguistic identity and cultural heritage of the region while acknowledging the contribution of local residents whose traditional ecological knowledge aided in locating the species.

“Discovered in Buzawade, Chandgad, the species was found residing in human-inhabited, residential, and agricultural landscapes—proving that critical subterranean biodiversity persists outside protected forest boundaries,” a press statement from ZSI said.  Identifying the species required combining molecular data with detailed morphological and meristic analysis, establishing distinctiveness in a cryptically similar animal group often mistaken for earthworms or blind snakes, the reserachers said.

India currently records 41 caecilian species among its 458 total amphibian species. The discovery of Gegeneophis chandgadi brings the total count of Gegeneophis species in India to 12, with 11 endemic strictly to the Western Ghats.

The majority of Indian caecilians occur in the Western Ghats, where most species are endemic and inhabit tropical rainforests. Outside the Western Ghats, caecilians are also known from the humid forests of northeastern India and a few humid regions of the Eastern Ghats.