By Lauren Crothers
PHNOM PENH
A slithery earthworm-like creature that lives in Cambodia’s remote Cardamom Mountains has taken its place among the ranks of newly discovered species, it was announced Wednesday, with researchers expressing concern over the decimation of its habitat.
Flora and Fauna International, or FFI, released a statement announcing the discovery of Ichthyophis cardamomensis, the second species discovered in Cambodia that comes from an order of limbless amphibians known as caecilians.
The animal’s name gives a nod to the area in which it was found — a mountainous part of southwestern Cambodia that was closed to researchers in the wake of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and only became more accessible in the 1990s.
Pictures of the creature show it to be a shiny, snake-like amphibian, but with a very pointed face.
They “can often be mistaken for snakes, with larger species known to grow to 1.5 metres in length,” the statement said.
“This discovery, measuring 32.17 cm, is linked to the continuing ground-breaking work at the Centre for Biodiversity Conservation (CBC) in Phnom Penh, a joint initiative of Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP),” it added.
Neang Thy, a leading FFI zoologist credited in the research and discovery of the species, lauded the importance of the find.
“These discoveries are important to demonstrate that much of Cambodia’s biodiversity remains unknown and unstudied by science, and many more areas need to be searched,” he said in the statement.
"The Cardamom region is under threat from logging, land concessions, and other habitat destruction, and the danger of any new species, including the new caecilian, is that they may be discovered one year and go extinct the next,” he added.
FFI said the area is home to more than “80 threatened species, including the Asian elephant and gaur [Southeast Asian bovine].”
Last year, Thy discovered a new species of snake in the Cardamom Mountains that became known as a chequered wolf snake for its distinctive markings.
In 2013, birdwatchers also celebrated the discovery of the Cambodian tailorbird, which inhabits the floodplain areas of the Mekong River, just outside Phnom Penh.
