First record of White-eared Kob (Kobuskobleucotis) in Omo National Park, Ethiopia (Artiodactyla, Bovidae).

White-eared Kob, Kobuskobleucotis, Lichtenstein & Peters, 1853, is known to occur in the Gambela-Boma landscape in western Ethiopia and South Sudan. They live in herds and are generally found near water, in such places as plains, woodlands, swamps, and flood plains. We deployed 36 camera traps in Omo National Park and one of them took two images of a White-eared Kob. This is the first documentation from Omo National Park and showing that its range extends further to Omo than previously known and, therefore, the entire area (Gambella to Omo) can be considered as a range extension.

Beyond the numbers: Human attitudes and conflict with lions (Panthera leo) in and around Gambella National Park, Ethiopia.

Human-lion conflict is one of the leading threats to lion populations and while livestock loss is a source of conflict, the degree to which livestock depredation is tolerated by people varies between regions and across cultures. Knowledge of local attitudes towards lions and identification of drivers of human-lion conflict can help formulate mitigation measures aimed at promoting coexistence of humans with lions. We assessed locals' attitudes towards lions in and around Gambella National Park and compared the findings with published data from Kafa Biosphere Reserve, both in western Ethiopia. We used household interviews to quantify livestock loss. We found that depredation was relatively low and that disease and theft were the top factors of livestock loss. Remarkably, however, tolerance of lions was lower around Gambella National Park than in Kafa Biosphere Reserve. Multivariate analysis revealed that education level, number of livestock per household, livestock loss due to depredation, and livestock loss due to theft were strong predictors of locals' attitude towards lion population growth and conservation. We show that the amount of livestock depredation alone is not sufficient to understand human-lion conflicts and we highlight the importance of accounting for cultural differences in lion conservation. The low cultural value of lions in the Gambella region corroborate the findings of our study. In combination with growing human population and land-use change pressures, low cultural value poses serious challenges to long-term lion conservation in the Gambella region. We recommend using Arnstein's ladder of participation in conservation education programs to move towards proactive involvement of locals in conservation.

Development and worldwide use of non-lethal, and minimal population-level impact, protocols for the isolation of amphibian chytrid fungi.

Parasitic chytrid fungi have emerged as a significant threat to amphibian species worldwide, necessitating the development of techniques to isolate these pathogens into culture for research purposes. However, early methods of isolating chytrids from their hosts relied on killing amphibians. We modified a pre-existing protocol for isolating chytrids from infected animals to use toe clips and biopsies from toe webbing rather than euthanizing hosts, and distributed the protocol to researchers as part of the BiodivERsA project RACE; here called the RML protocol. In tandem, we developed a lethal procedure for isolating chytrids from tadpole mouthparts. Reviewing a database of use a decade after their inception, we find that these methods have been applied across 5 continents, 23 countries and in 62 amphibian species. Isolation of chytrids by the non-lethal RML protocol occured in 18% of attempts with 207 fungal isolates and three species of chytrid being recovered. Isolation of chytrids from tadpoles occured in 43% of attempts with 334 fungal isolates of one species (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) being recovered. Together, these methods have resulted in a significant reduction and refinement of our use of threatened amphibian species and have improved our ability to work with this group of emerging pathogens.

Evolutionary relationships of the critically endangered frog Ericabatrachus baleensis Largen, 1991 with notes on incorporating previously unsampled taxa into large-scale phylogenetic analyses.

BACKGROUND: The phylogenetic relationships of many taxa remain poorly known because of a lack of appropriate data and/or analyses. Despite substantial recent advances, amphibian phylogeny remains poorly resolved in many instances. The phylogenetic relationships of the Ethiopian endemic monotypic genus Ericabatrachus has been addressed thus far only with phenotypic data and remains contentious. RESULTS: We obtained fresh samples of the now rare and Critically Endangered Ericabatrachus baleensis and generated DNA sequences for two mitochondrial and four nuclear genes. Analyses of these new data using de novo and constrained-tree phylogenetic reconstructions strongly support a close relationship between Ericabatrachus and Petropedetes, and allow us to reject previously proposed alternative hypotheses of a close relationship with cacosternines or Phrynobatrachus. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss the implications of our results for the taxonomy, biogeography and conservation of E. baleensis, and suggest a two-tiered approach to the inclusion and analyses of new data in order to assess the phylogenetic relationships of previously unsampled taxa. Such approaches will be important in the future given the increasing availability of relevant mega-alignments and potential framework phylogenies.