By Emilee Thomson
Finding reptiles can be a challenge at the best of times, they are shy, highly cryptic creatures that are typically only active for some of the year. This is only made more challenging and more important when the target species is endangered. Globally, over one in five reptile species are currently threatened with extinction.
Enter the Condamine earless dragon (Tympanocryptis condaminensis)! This little dragon is around 6cm snout to vent length (SVL), highly cryptic and facing extinction. We don’t currently know a lot about the species, save that they’re small, restricted to small populations within privately owned agricultural properties and grassy verges of the Darling Downs region and like to hide in the deep soil cracks created by the black vertosol typical of the region.
So, we have set out to change this. Honours student Emilee Thomson has started fieldwork on estimating detectability of this special little dragon. The September 2024 field season started off with a bang as a collaboration with Dr. Megan Barnes at Detection for Good enabled us to trial the use of a conservation detection dog for locating the species in the field. Detection Dog Evie had her nose switched on and managed to locate several dragons in pre-set detection trial experiments and in an operational environment.
Can you spot the dragon here?
Along with this we have been conducting surveys to assess the efficacy of different survey methods which should help inform survey protocols for the species. This season a total of 52 surveys have been conducted to date and a total of 98 dragons observed between the sites!
Try to find the dragons in each of these photos (yes, there really is a dragon in each one!) – answers will be at the end!
Spot the dragon 1:
Spot the dragon 2:
Spot the dragon 3:
Spot the dragon 4:
Throughout the fieldwork season, Emilee aims to identify which areas have Condamine earless dragons, and the factors which increase or decrease the rates of detection. Other key environmental variables are being recorded with the hope that this data could help identify environmental factors that play a role in determining habitat suitability for Condamine earless dragons.
A database of dorsal photographs of dragons will hopefully serve as a method of mark-recapture and may be useful in monitoring populations in the future.
The fieldwork conducted during September was incredibly successful, however during November a week of consistent rain rendered a lot of survey sites inaccessible. The verges flooded and we were unable to conduct the standard surveys. Though this did throw a spanner in the works, there was a silver lining. Due to another simultaneous project currently being conducted involving radiotracking the dragons, we were able to learn more about the dragon’s behaviour when their habitat gets very, very wet. They will retreat to the refuge of their soil cracks when possible, and when these become inundated, they will instead opt to hide under vegetation.
We hope to learn as much as possible about these special little dragons, and, as with any cryptic species, the very first step is identifying how best to survey the species. A survey will never offer a complete census on a population, so identifying the rate of detection is very important for the next stages of research! We now have a handful of sites with confirmed dragon presence across the Darling Downs and are beginning to understand how various factors such as weather impact the behaviour of the dragons and how this affects survey efforts.
Conserving these reptiles is 100% a team effort, and we have an incredibly dedicated team working toward understanding the dragons. We also have a growing number of landholders who are an integral part of the equation, we hope to work alongside as many landholders as possible to achieve outcomes which benefit everyone!
These insights should then create learning opportunities to guide research efforts. It’s amazing to learn more and more about a species each time you encounter them, and Emilee is very excited to continue learning and researching these incredible little reptiles!
And finally, the dragon locations in the above photos- did you manage to find all four dragons?
Comments