New Furcifer Species

[Chris Anderson]

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to make you all aware of a recent paper that found that the Malagasy carpet chameleons consist of at least three cryptic species. In the paper, they elevate "Furcifer lateralis major" from southern Madagascar to a full species (Furcifer major), and describe a new species, Furcifer viridis, from western Madagascar, leaving the eastern form as Furcifer lateralis.

Here is the reference to the new paper:

Florio A.M., Ingram C.M., Rakotondravony H.A., Louis E.E., Raxworthy C.J. 2012. Detecting cryptic speciation in the widespread and morphologically conservative carpet chameleon (Furcifer lateralis) of Madagascar. J. Evol. Biol. 25(7), 1399-1414.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02528.x/abstract


Chris

 

[laurie]

Thanks Chris, I had heard of 2 different species being identified but had no idea there is a third now classed as a species.

 

[vladdimir26]

WOw! Interesting!

 

[clarkrw3]

Very cool Chris thanks for the heads up

 

[DanSB]

Very interesting thank you!

I have a couple of silly questions and I apologize if it is covered in the full paper but as you probably know I don't have access. Do you know which species is represented in the captive populations, is it all three? If it is more than one species I would imagine at least two of them would have different care requirements so this could be important to know and I wonder if this could be a reason why I read about some Carpets just not doing well or not breeding in captivity. I would imagine if you had two different species breeding would be more difficult and much less productive? It sounded like the morphological differences are very minor, is there something that could actually be picked out by an average person who hasn't seen hundreds of each?

Sorry for all the questions but I am a very curious person .

 

[Chris Anderson]

Very interesting thank you!

I have a couple of silly questions and I apologize if it is covered in the full paper but as you probably know I don't have access. Do you know which species is represented in the captive populations, is it all three? If it is more than one species I would imagine at least two of them would have different care requirements so this could be important to know and I wonder if this could be a reason why I read about some Carpets just not doing well or not breeding in captivity. I would imagine if you had two different species breeding would be more difficult and much less productive? It sounded like the morphological differences are very minor, is there something that could actually be picked out by an average person who hasn't seen hundreds of each?

Sorry for all the questions but I am a very curious person .

I know that F. lateralis and F. major have been in the pet trade (I've bred both) but I don't know about F. viridis, nor do I know of anyone who currently has F. major. The differences between the species are subtle, including the number of tubercle scales on the parietal crest and size and shape of the casque.

Chris