The discoveries of these species, announced in three studies published in 2025, had thrilled these conservationists and made them eager to double down on karst research.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink of these isolated limestone formations as islands. Each island is its own little vignette of biodiversity, where nature replays the experiment of adaptation and natural selection over and over,\u201d Lee Grismer, lead author of the studies that described the leaf-toed and slender gecko, told Mongabay. \u201cWe go to these natural insular laboratories to find the results of nature\u2019s experiments.\u201d<\/p>\n
The border clash is just one of a torrent of threats bearing down on these Cambodian karst ecosystems, which Grismer called \u201csomewhat of a black hole as far as scientific research goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dwindling funds for global conservation, border tensions and Southeast Asia\u2019s insatiable demand for cement \u2014 often made from limestone found in karst landscapes \u2014 are all putting pressure on future research.<\/p>\n Karst is a type of topography underlain by limestone, often featuring caves and rock structures, which are usually biodiversity hotspots because of their disconnected nature.<\/p>\n Researchers refer to these landscapes as \u201ckarstic archipelagoes\u201d since erosion, farms and water diversion often separate limestone hills from one another like islands in the sea.<\/p>\n Evan Quah, lead author of the bent-toed gecko study, told Mongabay he was \u201cblown away by the amount of karst that had not been surveyed\u201d in Cambodia. \u201cJust within Battambang and neighboring provinces,\u201d he said, \u201cthere are dozens of karst towers that we can see but we have not yet been able to get to.\u201d<\/p>\n After pulling back from the border, the field team was able to survey other karst areas. Quah said that while they \u201cstill need to go back to the lab to start analyzing the data and looking at the specimens,\u201d he\u2019s \u201cpretty confident\u201d they have more new species and country records \u2014 when a species is found in a country for the first time \u2014 in hand.<\/p>\n Quah, an associate professor at University Malaysia Sabah, said he hopes the research team can return to the border next year \u2014 before the region\u2019s development boom reaches more karst towers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe main challenge facing karst is our insatiable demand for cement,\u201d said Quah, who has helped describe more than 50 species of amphibians and reptiles across Southeast Asia. \u201cFor progress and development, humans are continuously building around the globe, which means there is a never-ending need for cement.\u201d<\/p>\n In order to produce enough cement, \u201ckarst is being grinded down\u201d in countries like Cambodia, he said. This represents the \u201cbiggest challenge to these ecosystems since a lot of Southeast Asia\u2019s karst is in Indochina.\u201d<\/p>\n This could lead to animals going extinct before humans even know they exist, Sinovas said.<\/p>\n \u201cMany karst endemic species have extremely restricted ranges. The destruction of a single limestone hill can lead to the extinction of potentially multiple species,\u201d Sinovas said. \u201cIt is critical and urgent that we protect these sites. Otherwise, we risk species vanishing literally into cement.\u201d<\/p>\n Fauna & Flora in Cambodia is working to secure protected area status for two individual karst towers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe documentation of new species is an important step to highlight the uniqueness of some of these formations,\u201d Sinovas said. \u201cIt is a way to help catalyze interest for the conservation of these areas.\u201d<\/p>\n Sothearen Thi, karst biodiversity coordinator for Fauna & Flora in Cambodia, told Mongabay that the priority is to get the karst hills of Phnom Sampov and Phnom Banan in Battambang classified as \u201cnatural heritage sites.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is just the first step. We can continue later with other karst hills across the border,\u201d Sothearen Thi said, adding that the Ministry of Environment and Battambang provincial government were in the process of drafting a subdecree for the two sites. \u201cThrough biodiversity surveys, we can provide the baseline data for legally protecting these areas.\u201d<\/p>\n Grismer, who is also director of research and a professor of biology at La Sierra University in California, said, \u201cthe economic rewards from cement are very difficult to pass up for under developed nations. It is a shit ton of money.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of our sidewalks, the cement in our houses and our freeways are loaded with the DNA of all sorts of species that may have never been to known to exist,\u201d Grismer said. \u201cThis is a catastrophic slap in the face to biodiversity.\u201d<\/p>\n While last year\u2019s surveys were \u201cextremely successful,\u201d more species surely remain undocumented in the area, he said. Given the limited distribution and likely endemic nature of the three species found in 2024, the geckos will likely meet the IUCN\u2019s \u201ccritically endangered\u201d criteria.<\/p>\n Grismer underlined the importance of field surveys in these isolated karst towers by explaining that these baselines form a \u201chistorical trajectory of how different species have evolved over time.\u201d Researchers can then \u201crelate that back to the environment and identify what causes this kind of change and what causes that type of change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom that, we can make predictions as to how they are going to evolve in the future,\u201d Grismer said. \u201cThis gives us a hedge against perhaps how to mitigate some of the possible ecological problems that are going to arise with climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cThere is probably nothing more important than conserving the biodiversity of this planet because without biodiversity, humans wouldn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n Quah, E. S., Grismer, L. L., Sinovas, P., Chourn, P., Chhin, S., Hun, S., \u2026 Grismer, J. L. (2025). Geographically structured genetic and morphological variation in a new species of Cyrtodactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from a karstic archipelago in western Cambodia. ZooKeys, 1240, 73-115. doi:10.3897\/zookeys.1240.139691<\/p>\n Grismer, L.L., Sinovas, P., Quah, E.S., Thi, S. Chourn, P., Chhin, S., \u2026 Grismer, J.L. (2025). A new species of Dixonius Bauer, good, & Branch, 1997 (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from a karstic archipelago in western Cambodia. Zootaxa, 5653(4), 501-523. doi:10.11646\/zootaxa.5653.4.3<\/p>\n Grismer, L.L., Sinovas, P., Quah, E.S.H., Thi, S., Chourn, P., Chhin, S., Hun, S., Cobos, A., Geissler, P., Ching, C. & Murdoch, M.L. (2025) A new species of lowland karst-dwelling Slender Gecko Hemiphyllodactylus Bleeker, 1860 (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from a karstic archipelago in western Cambodia. Zootaxa, 5569 (2), 253\u2013281. doi:10.11646\/zootaxa.5569.2.3<\/p>\n\u2018Karst is being grinded down\u2019<\/h2>\n
DNA-laden cement<\/h2>\n
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