''Ichthyophis nguyenorum'' is a species of caecilian in the family Ichthyophiidae. They were first found in

Kon Plông District Kon may refer to: Places * Koń, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland * Kon Tum province, Vietnam :*Kon Tum, capital of Kon Tum province, Vietnam. * Karkhaneh-ye Sefid Kon, a village in Lorestan Province, Iran * Kon, India, a town in ...

, Kon Tum Province, central Vietnam, in 2006, and formally described in 2012. The species is now also known from the Cat Tien National Park in Đồng Nai and

Lâm Đồng Lâm is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Lin in Chinese and Im in Korean. Lam is the anglicized variation of the surname Lâm. Lam is also a commonly held surname of Cantonese speakers of Chinese descent. Large populations in ...

provinces, southern Vietnam, and is presumed to occur more widely in suitable habitat in central and southern Vietnam as well as in eastern Cambodia.

Etymology

The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

''I. nguyenorum'' honours two Vietnamese herpetologists, Nguyen Quang Truong and Nguyen Thien Tao, who are brothers. The common name Nguyen's caecilian (''Ếch giun Nguyễn'' - literally "worm frog" in Vietnamese) has been coined for this species.

Description

The type series consists of three adult females that measure in total length. The tail is short and blunt, only about . The body is cylindrical and slightly depressed dorsoventrally. The eyes are slightly protruding. The tentacles are very close to the edge of the mouth. The head is slightly widened around the jaw angle and narrows anteriorly. The body has 312–318 annuli in total. The annular grooves are dorsally complete but narrowly separate ventrally, except for the last one tenth of body. The body color is uniform slate dorsally and paler, lilac ventrally. A broad and uninterrupted bright yellow lateral stripe runs throughout the body.

Habitat and conservation

''Ichthyophis nguyenorum'' inhabits seasonal tropical forests at elevations of

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

. The type specimens were collected on the floor of a secondary forest near a farmland, after heavy rain. The larvae live in streams. Habitat loss and degradation is common within the range of this species, but its sensitivity to forest loss is unknown. It is known to be present in one national park, and its likely range includes several other protected areas.

References

External links

Phát hiện một loài ếch giun mới ở Tây Nguyên, Việt Nam
Phùng Mỹ Trung, SVRVN, 2012
Ichthyophis nguyenorum
{{Taxonbar, from=Q3005962 nguyenorum Endemic fauna of Vietnam Amphibians of Vietnam Amphibians described in 2012