{"id":259878,"date":"2024-09-17T01:03:19","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T01:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/17\/brookesia-nofy-tiny-chameleon-spotted-by-tourists-in-madagascar-is-new-to-science\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:11:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:11:18","slug":"brookesia-nofy-tiny-chameleon-spotted-by-tourists-in-madagascar-is-new-to-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/17\/brookesia-nofy-tiny-chameleon-spotted-by-tourists-in-madagascar-is-new-to-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Brookesia nofy: Tiny chameleon spotted by tourists in Madagascar is new to science"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A leaf chameleon from the newly named species Brookesia nofy, found in Madagascar<\/p>\n

Andolalao Rakotoarison<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A species of leaf chameleon new to science, measuring less than half the length of a human forefinger, has been discovered in a tiny patch of Madagascar\u2019s highly threatened coastal rainforests.<\/p>\n

Miguel Vences<\/a> at the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany and his colleagues were alerted to its presence by tourists posting photos of the tiny reptiles on the internet.<\/p>\n

Vences\u2019s Malagasy collaborators, Andolalao Rakotoarison<\/a> and Alida Frankline Hasiniaina, went looking for it and collected the first sample.<\/p>\n

Leaf chameleons, from the genus Brookesia<\/em>, are miniature chameleons the colour of fallen leaves that have been breaking records for their small body sizes in recent years.<\/p>\n

Brookesia nana,<\/em> for example, described in northern Madagascar in 2021<\/a>, is just 22 millimetres long and is thought to be the world\u2019s smallest reptile.<\/p>\n

The new species, named Brookesia nofy<\/em> after the Ankanin\u2019ny Nofy tourist site where it was found on Madagascar\u2019s eastern coastline, is only slightly bigger at around 33 millimetres long. It is the first leaf chameleon to be found living in coastal or littoral, rainforests \u2013 arguably the island\u2019s most threatened habitat. Once extensive, only around 10 per cent remains.<\/p>\n

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It is possible B. nofy <\/em>has only survived because the forest patch where it is found is part of a private reserve run by a hotel whose owners have allowed trees to regenerate over the past 20 years. The species was also photographed by a local journalist five years ago in a bigger patch of forest nearby, but when Vences and his colleagues visited two years ago, they witnessed a large part of that forest being destroyed by bushfires.<\/p>\n

Supporting ecotourism ventures that give international tourists a chance to view Madagascar\u2019s rare chameleons alongside lemurs probably outweighs the heavy carbon footprint needed to travel there, says Vences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people don\u2019t see an economic value in the little patches of [surviving littoral] forest, the forest will be gone,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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[ad_1] A leaf chameleon from the newly named species Brookesia nofy, found in Madagascar Andolalao Rakotoarison A species of leaf chameleon new to science, measuring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":259879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}