Destruction of the collection of reptiles and arthropods at Butantan Institute: a view from the United Kingdom

Citizen science and online data: Opportunities and challenges for snake ecology and action against snakebite

The secretive behavior and life history of snakes makes studying their biology, distribution, and the epidemiology of venomous snakebite challenging. One of the most useful, most versatile, and easiest to collect types of biological data are photographs, particularly those that are connected with geographic location and date-time metadata. Photos verify occurrence records, provide data on phenotypes and ecology, and are often used to illustrate new species descriptions, field guides and identification keys, as well as in training humans and computer vision algorithms to identify snakes. We scoured eleven online and two offline sources of snake photos in an attempt to collect as many photos of as many snake species as possible, and attempt to explain some of the inter-species variation in photograph quantity among global regions and taxonomic groups, and with regard to medical importance, human population density, and range size. We collected a total of 725,565 photos-between 1 and 48,696 photos of 3098 of the world's 3879 snake species (79.9%), leaving 781 "most wanted" species with no photos (20.1% of all currently-described species as of the December 2020 release of The Reptile Database). We provide a list of most wanted species sortable by family, continent, authority, and medical importance, and encourage snake photographers worldwide to submit photos and associated metadata, particularly of "missing" species, to the most permanent and useful online archives: The Reptile Database, iNaturalist, and HerpMapper.

What do we know about some of the most conspicuous scorpion species of the genus Tityus? A historical approach

In the present study, comments are proposed on historical aspects of the most conspicuous scorpion species of the genus Tityus found in Brazil. Both Tityus bahiensis (Perty) and Tityus serrulatus Lutz & Mello are better known for their infamous reputation of noxious species. However, the original discovery and description of both species are associated with interesting historical episodes. A short comment is also provided on Tityus costatus (Karsch), the species possibly involved in the first record of a scorpion incident in Brazil.

Redi award lecture: clinical studies of snake-bite in four tropical continents

Research is discussed in the areas of venomous snake taxonomy, epidemiology, species diagnosis, defining the clinical phenotype of human envenoming, pathophysiological mechanisms of envenoming, clinical testing of antivenoms and prevention of snake-bite through community education. This work was carried out over the past 40 years in many countries in four tropical continents. The help and friendship of a large number of collaborators is gratefully acknowledged.