36 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Series 4, Volume 65, Supplement II 
ration), Quigama National Park, Luanda Province, in June/July 2016 (results in preparation), Serra 
da Neve and parts of Namibe Province in November/December 2016 (results in preparation), 
Bicuar National Park and parts of Huila Province in July/August 2017 (result in preparation), 
Kalandula falls and Pungo Andongo in Malanje province in December 2017 (results in prepara¬ 
tion), Mount Moco (Huambo Province) and Bicuar National Park (Huila Province), in March/April 
2018 (results in preparation). As a result of this joint project, one new species was already 
described, Cordylus namakuiyus by Stanley et al. (2016), and Tomopterna damarensis Dawood and 
Channing, 2002 was first recorded for Angola (Ceriaco et al. 2016a). In addition, several unde¬ 
scribed species and other new discoveries are in the process of being studied, described, and 
published. This collaborative project aims to resample both historical type localities and previous¬ 
ly unstudied areas in Angola. With new collections in hand, we will then use both molecular and 
morphological tools for addressing important questions in the biogeography and systematics of 
Angolan amphibians and reptiles. These new efforts will significantly increase the known species 
diversity of amphibians and reptiles for Angola, result in descriptions of several new species, 
resolve long-standing taxonomic problems, and contribute to a better knowledge of the distribution 
of herpetofauna that can inform conservation management priorities and decisions. While all of this 
work is related to the herpetological diversity of Angola, it also has direct bearing on the under¬ 
standing the diversity and distribution of species in all of the neighboring countries in central and 
southern Africa. 
Besides recent field research, a growing interest in the country’s rich but still poorly known 
herpetofauna has resulted in a considerable number of other activities. Included among these are 
the reviews by Ruas (2002) on the amphibians collected by Fernando Frade in Angola between 
1957 and 1959, based on the collections of the Institute de Investigagao Cientifica Tropical (IICT, 
formerly CZL); the publication of a field guide for the amphibians of Central Africa and Angola by 
Fretey et al. (2011); the publication of the type catalogue of amphibians and reptiles of the Museu 
Nacional de Historia Natural da 
Universidade do Porto by Ceria¬ 
co et al. (2014a), focusing partic¬ 
ularly the material collected by 
Francisco Newton and published 
by Ferreira (1904, 1906); the cre¬ 
ation of a snake venom research 
center in Malanje (CIMETOX), 
which has started to contribute to 
knowledge on the distribution of 
Angolan venomous snakes 
(Oliveira et al. 2016; Oliveira 
2017); and finally the ongoing 
Florida Museum of Natural His¬ 
tory, Villanova University and 
University of Michigan Dear¬ 
born project funded by JRS Bio¬ 
diversity Foundation, to locate, 
review, digitize, georeference 
and disseminate through online 
databases, such as GBIF and 
VertNet, all the available data on 
Figure 27. Dynamics of the knowledge, addition, description and discov¬ 
ery of herpetological taxa in Angola. We considered the first citation of each 
species for Angola as an addition. 
