Welcome to the Shieldtail Mapping Project!
We are a citizen science initiative to document Shieldtail snakes, one of India's least-studied groups of snakes.
Image: Uropeltis ellioti by Vivek Cyriac
Shieldtail snakes belong to the family Uropeltidae and are found only in peninsular India and Sri Lanka. The group has over 62 species, of which 44 are found in India. Most species have very small distributional ranges and are threatened by climate change and habitat degradation. Owing to their secretive underground lifestyle, basic information about their distribution and natural history remains unknown. The Shieldtail Mapping Project is aimed as a platform engage students, researchers and citizen scientists to document their observations that will allow us to collect vital natural history and distributional data on these fascinating snakes.
Project Updates/News
The Shieldtail Mapping Project has been collaborating with several authors to publish articles in local languages to popularize shieldtail snakes at a more local scale. As a first, Peeyush Sekhsaria has written a brilliant article on shieldtail snakes and their conservation for the Marathi magazine Bhavtaal. He beautifully mixes it up with his personal experience of seeing shieldtail snakes in the wild. Have a look at the article here.
If you are interested in writing articles on Shieldtail snakes in your local language, please get in touch with us at [email protected] and we will help!
Image: Plectrurus aureus by Vivek Cyriac
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Rediscovering the Golden Shieldtail
Our team, along with the South Wayanad division Forest Department, recently conducted a survey of the Camel’s hump hills in search of the rare Golden Shieldtail (Plectrurus aureus). This species was first discovered by Colonel Richard Henry Beddome in 1880 and is known only from a few specimens collected from the Chembra hills in Wayanad.
While, we have made several trips to Chembra peak over the last 10 years looking for the Golden Shieldtail, we realised we may not be looking in the right place. A forest guard on one of our recent trips informed us that earlier Chembra was not a single hill but included a cluster of hills. This prompted us to survey other regions in the Camel’s hump hills, which finally led us to find this elusive snake. |
Images: Vivek Cyriac
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Post of the MonthShieldtail snakes have a very unique looking tail that is unlike any other snake. They get their name 'shieldtail' because of the disks like shield/armour like structure on the tails of some species. The tails of shieldtail snakes are an important taxonomic character and can help researchers identify the genus or species of this group of snakes. Researchers have broadly classified the tails of shieldtail snakes into six distinct groups based on their structure and shape.
Follow us on our Instagram page (@shieldtails) to get more updates and information on Shieldtail snakes and the Shieldtail Mapping Project |
Here are updates on the shieldtail observation posted by fellow citizen scientists.
Total Observations |
Observations in last quarter
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360
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Number of Taxa |
Citizen Scientists |
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41
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85
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