Whoo, It's been awhile since I've been on here. Anyway, here's my two cents:

I didn't get to see the orig pic posted, but I did see the pic from umop. The top individual does look like a long-tail U. ebenaui. They're really not as uncommon as you think. I've seen quite a few back when I was dealing with Uroplatus a lot. I never had a big thing for ebenaui, so I would rarely look into their cages at importers. But the times I did I almost always saw at least one or two long-tailed U. ebenaui in the bunch. They're just not seen as overly special by most Madagascan importers. From what I remember long-tailed U. ebenaui were thought to be found from a certain locality. There was one mountain in northern Madagascar that had an overabundance in the population. I can't remember if this is something I heard from another oral source or if I read it in a taxonomy classification paper. It's been at least two or so years since I've looked at any of them.

U. malama are definitely a bit different from U. ebenaui and phantasticus. When they were described phantasticus and ebenaui were considered the same species (U. ebenaui). But U. malama are much larger with a medium sized tail. It's not overly small like U. ebenaui and not proportionate (sp?) like U. phantasticus; it's in the middle. U. malama are lighter colored with a vertical stripe and have no spines with the exception of over the eyes.

I have copies of the orig paper on U. malama being described as a new species. I'd be happy to start up a new topic on U. malama if people are interested. I can even provide B&W photocopies of the original pics of the U. malama holotype that are in the paper. If interested, email me at Reptiluvr@yahoo.com and/or on here and maybe I'll start up a new post.



Hope this helps,

Robert Gundy

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