Chris Anderson
Dr. House of Chameleons
I thought a few of you might be interested to know that a new chameleon paper came out in yesterday's online early edition of Biological Letters. The paper looked at the genetic relationship of Calumma tigris to other chameleon species and found that its closest relatives are the Rieppeleon species from East Africa, not the other Calumma species from Madagascar. Its now believed that this species evolved after an oceanic dispersal event from East Africa to the Seychelles islands. As a result, the monotypic genus, Archaius, has been revalidated with Archaius tigris as the sole recognized species.
Calumma is a troubling genus and for a long time its been known that it likely represented at least 3 distinct genera. This is the first genus to be spun off of Calumma but I expect one or two more will follow at some point.
Here is the article citation and link:
Townsend, T.M, Tolley, K.A., Glaw, F., Böhme, W., and Vences, M. (2010). Eastward from Africa: palaeocurrent-mediated chameleon dispersal to the Seychelles islands. Biol. Lett. [Epub ahead of print]. Available from http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/09/07/rsbl.2010.0701
Chris
Calumma is a troubling genus and for a long time its been known that it likely represented at least 3 distinct genera. This is the first genus to be spun off of Calumma but I expect one or two more will follow at some point.
Here is the article citation and link:
Townsend, T.M, Tolley, K.A., Glaw, F., Böhme, W., and Vences, M. (2010). Eastward from Africa: palaeocurrent-mediated chameleon dispersal to the Seychelles islands. Biol. Lett. [Epub ahead of print]. Available from http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/09/07/rsbl.2010.0701
Chris