Two new Angolan snake species named after Dr Bill Branch
● Former Bayworld herpetologist puts war-ravaged African nation on the global reptile map
Two snakes from Angola have been named after late Bayworld herpetologist Dr Bill Branch, a fitting tribute to the man who played a huge role in putting that country on the global reptile map.
A swamp snake which feeds on fish and a canary-yellow house snake, both new to science, will help keep alive the name of the man who collected them, and the work he did in more than 20 African countries, helping local scientists document their reptile and amphibian diversity.
It has been a long and winding road for the two serpents which Branch pouched in two separate expeditions — to Lake Carumbo in northern Angola in 2011, and the source of the Cuito River in central Angola four years later.
Amid a raft of other specimens and Branch’s death in 2018 they had to wait their turn to be properly studied and recorded but the delay had been worth it, incumbent Bayworld herpetologist Dr Werner Conradie said yesterday.
“We completed our genetic and morphology [shape and structure] analysis and scale counts and it was definitive.
“They are both, indeed, completely new species and we have named them both after Bill as the man who collected them and who also opened up Angola in herpetology terms, the same way he did for
South Africa.” Conradie said the Carumbo trip had involved a team including Portuguese, British and South African scientists as well as a group of Angolan students.
The aim was to assess the biodiversity in and around the lake and its potential in conservation terms.
“The Carumbo fishermen often used to catch snakes in their fish traps and in just five days they presented to Bill six specimens of this particular swamp snake species, confirming that there was a healthy population of them.”
The snake, now Branch’s swamp snake, described in the July 2020 edition of the African Journal of Herpetology, was about 40cm long, very dark in colour and fed entirely on fish, he said.
“When we opened one of them up we found an eel-like catfish and a climbing purch, which uses its fins to ‘crawl’ between pools in the dry season.”
Thanks to the finds and recommendations flowing from the expedition, Carumbo was declared a protected area and the hope is that it will in time become part of a national park.
The 2015 expedition was to Lisima Lya Mwono, a remote lake in the Angolan Highlands, source of the Cuito River and ultimately Botswana’s Okavango Swamps.
Headed by a heavyweight international team from National Geographic, the primary aim was to discover why the water in the Okavango was receding and to do so the team would paddle and hike 2,400km from the source to the swamps.
The intention was also to study the local wildlife and plants and a large group of scientists, including the two Port Elizabeth herpetologists, was recruited for different phases of the trip.
Conradie said Branch had been leaving the area after his stint in the field and had come across the bright yellow snake, now Branch’s house snake, on a road, where it had been killed by a car. Recognising it as probably something new, he had stowed it away in his vehicle for examination back at his laboratory at Bayworld.
Hugely knowledgeable about a range of issues and ecological matters in general, Branch had been a quintessential expedition man, a giant of African herpetology and an inspiration to many, he said.
“He was known internationally for his field guides especially, and after his pioneering work in South Africa he turned his attention to Angola which had been closed off to wildlife research for three decades because of the civil war there.
“He is the modern father of herpetology in Angola and there could not be a more appropriate person after whom to name these two snakes.”