New Southeast Asian herpetologist listings added to the people directory: Cameron Siler and Charles Linkem.

An article on the Thai herpetologist, Wirot Nutphand, has been contributed by Olivier Pauwels and Montri Sumontha.

New listing added: Alex Kupfer.

Thanks to Olivier Pauwels, I've posted up an image of Lawan Chanhome.

At the suggestion of Olivier Pauwels, I have added listings for a number of our colleagues from Thailand: Miss & Dr. Lawan Chanhome, Mr. Montri Sumontha, Dr. Kumthorn Thirakhupt, Miss Sansareeya Wangkulangkul, Dr. Wachira Kitimasak, and Mr. Komsorn Lauprasert. A listing and biography of Wirot Nutphand will be coming soon.

A new listing has been added to the People section: Anita Malhotra.

Ulrich Manthey has kindly contributed some series images of Glyphoglossus molossus from Thailand, Microhyla heymonsi from Pedu Lake, and Microhyla annectens (with another series here), with each series showing the respective species in various stages of development (larval, metamorph, and adult).

A new image of Gernot Vogel has been added.

Biographies and images of two other members of the Southeast Asian herpetological community have been added to the People section: Thy and Thu.

Photographs of two Southeast Asian herpetologists have been added: Perry Wood and Tim Youmans.

A new listing has been added under the People section: Kate Sanders.

More species images from Gunung Ulu Kali, Genting Highlands: Bufo asper, Amolops larutensis, Rana banjarana (1), Rana banjarana (2), Megophrys longipes (1), Megophrys longipes (2), and Rhacophorus bipuncatus.

A number of series of images of frog species have been added: Limnonectes malesianus (two series, here and here), from Bukit Gasing, and Rana raniceps, from Bukit Gasing (three series, here, here and here) and FRIM (one series).

Species images taken during a recent visit to Frasers Hill have been added: Amolops larutensis, Megophrys longipes, Metaphrynella pollicaris and Limnonectes nitidus.

Images of a male and female Rhacophorus pardalis from Sarawak have been added.

Patrick David has updated his bibliography.

Two new images of species have been posted: Nyctixalus pictus from its northernmost known locality by Olivier Pauwels, and Rhacophorus bipunctatus from Genting, by Elango Velautham.

Photographs of David Gower from his recent visit to Borneo have been uploaded, showing him at work with caecilians and snakes

Some more images of species from Borneo that occur in the Malay Peninsula, at least, nominally: Nyctixalus pictus and Pelophryne signata.

The Mantheys and the Denzers visited Sarawak recently, and it was very pleasant meeting up with them. This also provided the opportunity for some updated photographs, which I have posted up at the appropriate pages here and here.

As some of you might know, I am currently in the field in Borneo. I'm having a fantastic time! Not only am I thrilled to have this chance to come to grips with a new fauna, but I am equally excited by this great opportunity to observe first-hand and in-life many of the Bornean forms of species that are apparently shared between the Malay Peninsula and this Sundaland island. I present here some of the photographs I have taken of these Bornean forms of species that also occur in the Malay Peninsula: Chaperina fusca, Kaloula baleata, Limnonectes kuhlii, and Nyctixalus pictus. These are all from a recent trip to Tawau Hills Park, in southeastern Sabah.

An article on the new amphibian monitoring programme, "Project Kodok", in Kalimantan, Indonesia, has been sent in by Sam Shonleben.

Olivier Pauwels has kindly contributed an image of Patrick David, Yuezhao Wang and himself.

Thanks to the kind generosity of Kelvin Lim, many images of herpetologists have been added, including: Arvin Diesmos, Indraneil Das, Lee Grismer, Bob Inger, Tan Fui Lan, and, of course, Kelvin himself.

Listings have been added for Francis Lim and Lim Liang Jim.

Two new listings of workers on herpetology in this region have been added - Tan Heok Hui and Benjamin Lee.

Images of Indraneil Das, Kelvin Lim, and Leong Tzi-Ming have been posted.

Rafe Brown has updated his biography with some information and photographs.

Bryan Stuart has updated his biography.

Some images of Microhyla ornata have been added.

Perry Wood has contributed an image of Chaperina fusca breeding.

Robert Inger has updated his biography.

Djoko Iskander has updated his biography.

Ulrich Manthey has updated his biography.

Ulrich Manthey has contributed images of a male and female Kaloula baleata from Taman Negara.

Yodchaiy Chuaynkern has updated his biography.

Ulrich Manthey has kindly contributed some photographs of Leptolalax heteropus from Taman Negara, and Rhacophorus cyanopunctatus from the type locality in Surat Thani, Thailand.

Olivier Pauwels and Arvin Diesmos have updated their biographies.

A new article has been added - "Beauty with a Purpose" explores how animals use colors and patterns as a defensive mechanism to protect themselves from predation.

Olivier Pauwels has contributed some photographs of Tanya Chan-ard and Yodchaiy Chuaynkern, taken by him, as well as one of himself, taken by his wife.

Tim Youmans has just updated his bio.

Just added a biography of Joe Slowinski by Robert Jadin. Also, Raoul Bain has updated his biography with morec current details and a photograph.

New species added - Calluella minuta, recently described by Das, Norsham and Lim. With this, I also remove Calluella volzi from the species coverage of this site. Previous documentations or reports of Calluella volzi in the Peninsula (Berry, 1975 - The Amphibian Fauna of Peninsula Malaysia; Kiew, 1990 - Amphibian Fauna of Taman Negara, Journal of Wildlife and Parks 10: 96-108) were based on a single specimen collected by J.R. Hendrickson that has been reassigned to Calluella minuta (Das et al., 2004).

Folks - I've extended the coverage of the People section to include contemporary herpetologists as well! Now it is well on the way toward becoming a veritable "Who's Who" of Southeast Asian herpetology. I've also completely upgraded the Contact page, to make it a full-fledged Contact service, which you can use to get in touch with herpetologists covered in the People section. Working in conjunction, I hope that these elements will go far toward building a stronger sense of community and fellowship among Southeast Asian herpetologist, and help facilitate not only communication, but also co-operation and collaboration.

Check out the Species Index, the Species Account Index and the Species Image Index pages! Now you can get to the content that you want faster and easier than ever!

While expanding/collapsing tree-driven sidebar menus is the most natural way to navigate through any hierarchy, and thus ideal for this site, the fact that the entire systematics of Malay Peninsula frogs needed to be loaded onto the menu not only on each and every page, but on each and every click on each and every page, meant that the apparent ease of access that it offered was actually false economics - it would be faster to head back to the home page, go to the appropriate index and jump directly to the species/article/etc. of interest that way. So I've replaced them with the compromise you see throughout the site now. Hopefully, this will work better!

Major update, folks!

I've added two features - "People" and "Articles". I am particularly excited about the "People" section. This has a potential to grow into quite a rich and informative on-line history of the herpetology of Southeast Asia through the stories and biographies of the people who forged the field in its early days, as well as serving as a "Who's who" of herpetologists today.

There is also a new site search tool that allows you to search through the various dynamically-generated documents on this site if you need to try and locate something specific. In a few month's time, I hope to augment this with a database query tool, for much more powerful and advanced access to information.

That's right - I am currently working on an major structural as well as content update to the site, and I should be releasing it in a few days. This update will include two new sections - "Articles" as well as "People". Stay tuned!

Many of you have links to species account pages of the old website. Since the new site presents a completely different architecture, you might find these links broken.

Until now, that is.

I've added some C# code that takes care of properly patching you through to the appropriate species account under the new site architecture. It should work for all species account pages that were valid under the old site, as well as specie image gallery index pages. Specific image pages, however, are not supported, and probably will not be, as I am building up the website image bank from scratch all over again.

Well, the site is up and running, but it has a lot of growing to do!

Currently, only the species section is available. Conceptually, there are three aspects to this section: species accounts, image galleries,and audio galleries. Of these, only the first two are on-line; I am still developing the infrastructure for the audio section. Furthermore, while the species accounts, species image galleries have been released, I am still in the process of updating basic content here: I've only posted images of about half the species for which I have photographs, and most species accounts are still limited to the most basic of information (classification, authority, type locality and specimens, distribution, etc.). However, after a brief break next week as I head to the field, I expect to get cracking again, and I should have a much more stable and fleshed out diversity section (minus the audio galleries) within a couple of weeks. Or so.

Over a slightly longer period (one or two months), I also expect to have some of the other core sections up - articles, people/biographies, locality checklists, a comprehensive references section, etc. Of course, the most anticipated of the missing sections are the audio galleries, but this may take a little longer. It took me a couple of months to design, develop and implement the database that manages my photographs; a task of similar magnitude awaits for a corresponding database for my audio recordings. Not to mention the higher load in time and effort in the workflow of publishing an audio recording - I have to identify segments of the recording to be published, digitize the segments, database the appropriate information, generate the corresponding sonogram, etc. etc. Not to mention that I need to design and develop the web architecture and infrastructure (code framework and controls) to support the audio section, and integrate it all with the current website! So I do not even dare give you a date for this. But rest assured, I AM working on it!

It is born!

It is the wee hours of the morning here in Malaysia, and the basic (very basic) version of the site is just about ready to be released. Just about, but not quite, alas!