10 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Series 4, Volume 65, Supplement II 
to researchers for many years, effectively preventing modem surveys and studies, with negative 
implications for the advancement of biodiversity knowledge and conservation in all of sub-Saha¬ 
ran Africa. Fortunately, the end of the almost 30-year civil war in 2002 and the subsequent social 
and economic development of the country have created the appropriate climate for the return of sci¬ 
entific research, with support from both the national and international scientific communities. 
Biodiversity research and conservation initiatives have flourished in the country in the last decade, 
with Angola becoming a major player in the area, a fact reflected in Angola’s recent hosting of 
World Environment Day on 5 June 2016. Numerous studies on Angolan plants (Figueiredo et al. 
2009; Romeiras et al. 2014; Gongalves and Goyder 2016), birds (Sinclair et al. 2004; Ryan et al. 
2004; Sekercioglu and Riley 2005; Mills and Dean 2007; Mills 2010; Mills et al. 2011; Caceres et 
al. 2015), mammals (Pitra et al. 2006; Rodrigues et al. 2015; Baptista et al. 2013; Vaz-Pinto et al. 
2015, 2016; Themudo et al. 2015), amphibians and reptiles (Fretey et al. 2011; Conradie et al. 
2013, 2015, 2016; Ceriaco et al. 2014a,b, 2016a,b; Ernst et al. 2014, 2015; Branch and Conradie 
2015) and insects (Serrano and Capela 2013, 2015) including the description of new endemic 
species (Haacke 2008; Conradie et al. 2012a,b; Carleton et al. 2015; Serrano et al. 2015; Stanley 
et al. 2016; Svensson et al. 2017) and a new endemic genus (Heinicke et al. 2014), and the publi¬ 
cation of species atlases and checklists (Pinto 1983; Crawford-Cabral 1987, 1998; Crawford- 
Cabral and Verissimo 2005; Mendes et al. 2013; Mills and Melo 2013; Kipping et al. 2017) are all 
clear evidence of the current scientific interest in Angolan biodiversity and its conservation. 
Angola boasts high herpetofaunal diversity, with 116 amphibian and 273 reptile taxa (278 if 
marine turtles are taken into account, see Taxonomic Accounts and Appendix Table Al), though 
this fauna has been neglected, especially when compared to the number of studies on mammals and 
birds. As an example, there are fewer than 10,000 extant museum specimens of amphibian or rep¬ 
tile from Angola, contrasting with nearly 40,000 museum herpetological specimens from neigh¬ 
boring and smaller Namibia, and >130,000 published records for reptiles alone from South Africa 
(Bates et al. 2014). Only one-third of Angolan amphibian and reptile species have been assessed 
by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (lUCN), and 29 of these are assessed as Data 
Deficient. In general, species distributions are poorly known, threats are unassessed, taxonomic 
problems are rife, and the species richness of Angola is believed to be underestimated. This situa¬ 
tion is exacerbated by the fact that one of the most important collections of Angolan amphibians 
and reptiles, containing dozens of type specimens critical to resolving taxonomic problems, was 
destroyed in the 1978 fire at the Museu Bocage in Lisbon. 
As part of an international partnership between INBAC, the Institute Nacional de Biodiversi- 
dade e Areas de Conservagao (Luanda, Angola), the California Academy of Sciences (San Fran¬ 
cisco, California, USA), the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida 
(Gainesville, Florida, USA), Villanova University (Villanova, Pennsylvania, USA), the University 
of Michigan at Dearborn (Dearborn, Michigan, USA), and the Museu Nacional de Historia Natu¬ 
ral e da Ciencia (former Museu Bocage, Lisbon, Portugal), new herpetofaunal field surveys and 
studies have been launched with funding from the United States National Science Foundation. 
These new surveys aim to re-survey historical type localities to collect topotypical material and 
provide new data (morphology, DNA, frog calls, etc.) for taxonomic studies currently impeded by 
the loss of many critical type specimens. Other research is planned to explore previously unsam¬ 
pled regions in order to better document and understand the diversity and distribution of the 
Angolan herpetofauna. 
This partnership has also resulted in other projects and activities related to the amphibians and 
reptiles of Angola. All museum records of Angolan specimens have been synthesized and georef- 
erenced through a project funded by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation, and all bibliographic records 
