New classification and renaming of tegus

[laurarfl]

From a tegu friend and scientist who studies tegus:
The new scientific names:

Salvator duseni Yellow or Duseni's tegu
Salvator rufescens Argentine Red Tegu
Salvator merianae So many names......
Tupinambis teguixin Colombian Black&White/Gold tegu
Tupinambis longilineus Rhondonia tegu
Tupinambis palustris Swamp tegu
Tupinambis quadrilineatus Four-lined tegu

Link to the article:
http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2012/f/z03459p156f.pdf

Link to original thread:
http://www.thetegu.com/showthread.php?11655-Just-when-you-thought-you-had-a-handle-on-tegu-systematics

 

[Logie_Bear]

Wow, thanks for sharing this! Between this and the reclassification of Rhacodactylus I feel like all my knowledge of Latin names is flying out the window.

 

[chelvis]

Hum, interesting to see if this will stick. Problem with taxonomy is it changes from group to group and even country to country. Working with wolves we got lumpers and spliters and we can never agree on taxonomy.

 

[laurarfl]

Strange to me. I imagine people sitting around saying, "See those lizards over there? We should change their name to Salvator. I was looking at the nasal portion of their noses and their hemipenes the other day...."

 

[Murkve]

Huh. Colombians and Argentines are in separate genera now? Did he tell you the reason for the switch? And what is that S. Duseni one?

 

[laurarfl]

Duseni is the yellow tegu, not to be confused with the gold tegu.

---

My impression from reading the abstract was that the researchers conducted a more in-depth anatomical study and determined that there were significant enough differences between the two groups to split them.

 

[Murkve]

Indeed, I never knew there was a third Tupinam - err, Salvatorid south of the Amazon. There is. The Yellow Tegu.

Yellow Tegu

Looks just like the B&W and Red, except Yellow! Pretty cool!

 

[laurarfl]

A lot of people are drooling for that one.

 

[dragonmetalhead]

Any way to find a readable version of the entire article?

 

[laurarfl]

The only one I have found is for the subscribers the Zootaxa journal

 

[Murkve]

A lot of people are drooling for that one.

You know, I bet that if that Tegu were to enter the market, in 20 years we might have a remarkable number of morphs. Possibly even an argument for domestication.

 

[HeatherN]

bah, now ill be saying tupinambis for years and always be wrong. then, with my luck, theyll change it again soon as i change my habit!

 

[chelvis]

I can get some full articles form free through the university. Let me see what I can do about that.