A team of scientists from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has discovered a rare, subterranean amphibian species in the northern Western Ghats. The new species, named Gegeneophis Valmiki, marks the first discovery within its genus in over a decade, shedding light on a group of animals often referred to as the “hidden amphibians.”
The findings, published in the international journal Phyllomedusa, are the result of a collaborative effort between the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Savitribai Phule Pune University, Balasaheb Desai College, and the Mhadei Research centre. The species was first collected in 2017 by Dr KP Dinesh, Senior Scientist at the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), on the Valmiki Plateau in the Satara district of Maharashtra. The name Gegeneophis Valmiki honours the historic Maharshi Valmiki Mandir located near the discovery site.
Notably, Caecilians are limbless, worm-like amphibians that live deep within soil and organic matter. Unlike frogs, they do not produce vocal calls, making their discovery exceptionally rare and often accidental.
According to Dr Dinesh, identifying members of the genus Gegeneophis in the field is incredibly difficult. “Commonly known as blind caecilians, their eyes are concealed beneath their bony skull,” said Dr Dinesh. “They look and move so much like earthworms that confirming their status as a new species required years of rigorous morphological and genetic analysis,” he added.
As learnt from the ZSI scientists, while the Western Ghats are a global biodiversity hotspot, caecilians remain a tiny and elusive fraction of known life. Only 231 of the world’s 8,983 amphibian species are caecilians across the globe. In India, 42 species of caecilians are documented out of 457 amphibians while the Western Ghats are home to 26 endemic species, with 11 belonging to the Gegeneophis group.
Interestingly, while overall amphibian diversity is typically higher in the southern Western Ghats, the northern region, where this discovery was made, shows a unique concentration of Gegeneophis species.
As elaborated by the scientists, beyond their rarity, caecilians play a vital role in the environment. In agriculture, their burrowing aerates soil and improves structure, while their diet of soil invertebrates maintains ecosystem balance. In the food web, they serve as a critical food source for birds, reptiles, and small mammals. They represent a crucial transitional phase in vertebrate evolution between aquatic and terrestrial life.
Dr Dhriti Banerjee, Director of ZSI, warned of the urgency of such work: “With 41 per cent of the world’s amphibians threatened with extinction, documenting these species is a race against time. “We must identify them to prevent ‘silent extinctions’ ~ where a species vanishes before we even know it exists,” said Dr Banerjee.