Snake diversity, occupancy, and detection on Thailand's largest university campus.

More than 240 species of snake have been described from Thailand, yet basic natural history and ecology for this group of animals remains scarce in human disturbed environments despite conservation and human medical significance of them in these habitats. We studied snake diversity at Walailak University from March to December 2023, the largest university campus in Thailand (1525 hectares) through standardized walking surveys, opportunistic notifications and observation, road surveys, and traps and evaluated diversity using the Shannon diversity index (), Pielou's evenness of species (), detection probabilities (), and occupancy probabilities (ψ). We observed 195 snakes (21 species, 7 families) at Walailak University and overall snake diversity ( = 2.

The East Indies reptile tick Amblyomma helvolum Koch, 1844 (Acari: Ixodidae), taxonomy, biology and new host records, including the first record of human infestation.

Amblyomma helvolum is a widespread, generalist ectoparasite of reptiles in the oriental region, and has the potential to become highly invasive should it be inadvertently introduced outside its native range through the exotic pet trade. All life stages of A. helvolum are re-characterised morphologically and the first examples of nanism (dwarfism) and gynandromorphy (male and female tissue in one animal) for the species are described.