Wildlife Conservation: The Snake Man Raymond Hoser has now discovered and named over 300 species of reptile. As the world's foremost reptile expert, Snakeman Raymond Hoser has discovered and named more species of reptile than anyone alive on the planet.
This is critically important as without being discovered and formally named, species of wild animals cannot be conserved and saved from extinction.
Hoser has discovered and named species from pretty much all over the world, including every inhabited continent and most remote islands as well, including such places as Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Guam, Madagascar, numerous coral cays in the remote Pacific islands, off Australia's coast, in south east Asia and even the Mediterranean. Hoser’s discoveries and species he has named also include the world’s longest snake, the world’s smallest snake, Victoria’s largest frog, the largest Snapping Turtle on the planet and many of the world’s most venomous snakes. Hoser has discovered and named species of rattlesnake, other pitvipers, true vipers, including Gaboon, Nose horned, Berg, Puff and European, King Brown Snakes, Kraits, Death Adders and even Cobras. In terms of non-venomous snakes, he's named a pile of them including tree snakes, boas, pythons, blind snakes, file snakes, cat snake, egg eater, slatey grey and more.
As for lizards, Hoser has discovered species of giant Monitors, small ones as well, Legless Lizards, Skinks, Dragons, geckos and others.
Hoser is one of the few living people to have also discovered and named species of Crocodile.
Besides discovering species of reptile, he’s also named species of frogs, a few Funnel-web spiders, a possum and even a new species of Kangaroo from West Papua.
Hoser stresses that discovery of species is only the first step in ensuring their conservation. An insidious problem that is seen in Zoology and herpetology in particular is that of taxonomic vandalism, whereby non-scientists illegally rename species or in the same raft of actions pretend that newly discovered forms do not exist. This is an ego-based problem, whereby people seek to downgrade discoveries of people they see as rivals and improperly pretend that their work does not exist.
Both significantly increase extinction risk and taxonomic vandals Wolfgang Wüster and others have already directly caused extinctions of species, including a species of spectacular dragon lizard from Victoria.
Recently Hoser published a major scientific paper detailing how Wüster and others in his cohort caused the first extinction of a Vertebrate in Victoria. The paper can be downloaded from the citation below.
Hoser, R. T. 2019. Richard Shine et al. (1987), Hinrich Kaiser et al. (2013), Jane Melville et al. (2018 and 2019): Australian Agamids and how rule breakers, liars, thieves, taxonomic vandals and law breaking copyright infringers are causing reptile species to become extinct. Australasian Journal of Herpetology, Issue 39, published 12 June 2019, pages 53-63.
And for those who want to see the full list of new species, genera and family that the Snakeman Raymond Hoser has named as of 11 July 2019, see the official Zoobank listing below.
Species, genera and family formally named by Snakeman Raymond Hoser, the official list.
No one born after 1900 has ever named more than 300 species of reptile and besides Raymond Hoser, it is unlikely anyone will ever reach this milestone again.
Historically, the most species of reptile were formerly named by (in order), George Boulenger (UK) about 600, John Edward Gray (about 400), Albert Günther (UK) about 400, Edward Drinker Cope (about 350), Wilhelm Karl Hartwich (or Hartwig) Peters (about 350), André Marie Constant Duméril and Gabriel Bibron (about 300) (all born in the 1800’s or earlier), placing Hoser in the top ten of all time in terms of herpetologist taxonomic output and only one of eight to have ever named more than 300 species of reptile.
Within Australia, most species of reptile were named by Glenn Storr (about 200 species), followed by Richard Wells and Ross Wellington (still alive) at about 170, with Snakeman Raymond Hoser sitting at number three, having named well over 100 species.
Unlike Hoser, Storr, Wells and Wellington have not named many species outside Australia.
Within Australia, Wells and Wellington have also named most of the reptile genera or at least far more than anyone else, meaning that their dominance of the naming of Australian reptiles is unmatched and unassailable.
Globally, Snakeman Raymond Hoser has named more genera of reptile than anyone else alive (hundreds) and is similarly unassailable in this regard.