''Ichthyophis hypocyaneus'', the Javan caecilian or marsh caecilian, is a species of

amphibian Amphibians are tetrapod, four-limbed and ectothermic vertebrates of the Class (biology), class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terres ...

in the family Ichthyophiidae of caecilians,

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. Until its rediscovery in 2000, it was known only from the 1827

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to a ...

Distribution and habitat

''Ichthyophis hypocyaneus'' is so far known from four sites on Java Island, Indonesia, and was originally described in Banten in West Java. The species was thought to be extinct but rediscovered through a second observation in Pekalongan. The third sighting of the species was in Bodogol, at the edge of Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park (Kusrini 2007), and the fourth sighting in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park.

Ecology

''Ichthyophis'' caecilians are oviparous and present in a broad range of terrestrial microhabitats, ranging from primary forests to plantations. The breeding season overlaps with the rainy season, when ''Ichthyophis'' caecilians are usually found in

epigeic Epigeal, epigean, epigeic and epigeous are biological terms describing an organism's activity above the soil surface. In botany, a seed is described as showing epigeal germination when the cotyledons of the germinating seed expand, throw off th ...

microhabitats. Egg deposition starts at the onset of the monsoon with metamorphosis taking place before the end of the dry season.

References

hypocyaneus Amphibians of Indonesia Endemic fauna of Java Taxa named by Johan Conrad van Hasselt Amphibians described in 1827 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{caecilian-stub