New paper on Neurergus strauchii

[sergé]

For anyone who is seriously interested in keeping and breeding Neurergus species:

Conservation biology, husbandry, and captive breeding of the endemic Anatolia newt, Neurergus strauchii Steindachner (1887) (Amphibia: Caudata: Salamandridae). Sergé Bogaerts, Henry Janssen, Jennifer Macke, Gunter Schultschik, Kristina Ernst, François Maillet, Christoph Bork, Frank Pasmans, and Patrick Wisniewski. Amphibian and Reptile Conservation 6(4):9-29(e53).

For free to download:

redlist.arc.org - Neurergus Newts

Have fun reading it!

 

[Molch]

awesome. So cool that all you strauchii experts managed to come together and publish thisra
I think this should happen more often: hobbyists have so much knowledge to contribute, but it rarely makes its way into the peer-reviewed literature. This is cool, folks!

 

[sergé]

Thank you! Yes, it shows, to my opinion, that bringing together the best current knowledge from the private experts can make a great contribution. And I am especially proud on my co-authors.

And we show that there are no country or language borders for private people who have the same interest

 

[eljorgo]

Thank you! Yes, it shows, to my opinion, that bringing together the best current knowledge from the private experts can make a great contribution. And I am especially proud on my co-authors.

And we show that there are no country or language borders for private people who have the same interest

Absolutely Sergé. I think Arnaud would be an excellent contributor too, since he also breeds this species. I am getting some of his CB via Gersfeld and am very excited about it!!
Maybe I can be breeding them in a few years. Do you know if Jamin's Maillet's and Raffaelli's strains (which I believe are the same) descend from the breedings where gold-dust animals were born?

Cheers!

 

[Jennewt]

I looked back at my old e-mail records to see how long we worked on this paper. Sergé first proposed assembling and writing this paper back in 2005. Yes, it was 7 years in the making! Like captive breeding itself, it required a long-term commitment.

I suspect that this project involved a certain amount of "herding cats" and Sergé was the one to try to make sense from all of us. A big thank you to Sergé for never giving up!

 

[methodik]

Thank you all for your work on this article, thank you Serge for introducing these great animals into the hobby (I guess I got some from 'your' line). I hope I can get some barani in Gersfeld to have a nice breeding group. These newts exceed in every way in my opinion: they are hardy, very beautiful and keeping them is always a delight.

 

[sergé]

Read the paper well! I never introduced this species into the hobby! One of the funny things is that most animals of N. s. strauchii (I can not garantee for all) that were kept among the other authors were descendants of Fleck's orginal breedings 40 years ago! And especially Henry Janssen en Gunter Schultschik have had good breeding success with this species and could spread them to others. Jennifer is the one who set up a breeding line in the US.

During our field research (see the papers in the references) on this species I was even more fascinated to try and combine all the available knowledge, which was difficult enough with some many people and the very different datasets. But I was lucky that all authors were very enthousiastic and agreed to work together. It took so long mainly due to other activities that came along.

I have been not the best breeder with this species, as you can see in the article. The group I bred with in 2006 passed away in 2008 due to what we now know was a Chlamydia infection, but I am raising a new group. With N. crocatus I have a stable group, that has been breeding for four succesive years now, and I keep and breed them more or less the way as it is described for N. strauchii.

 

[methodik]

Next time I will say it more correct, I only knew you were responsible for at least one line in europe. I know of the good work of e.g. Mr. Schultschik as my barani are probably in some way from him. Anyways, I just quickly scanned the paper and already had some things I knew I had to look at more carefully.

 

[morg]

Excellent informative article