Brookesia
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Common Chameleon ( Brookesia superciliaris ) |
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| Brookesia | ||||||||||||
| Gray , 1865 |
Brookesia (also known as "earth chameleons ") is a genus of stubby-tailed chameleons that is endemic to Madagascar . They colonize the soil as well as the herbaceous and shrub layers of the primary forests ; they are less common in cultivated land . The genus name Brookesia is a dedication to the British anatomist Joshua Brookes , in whose Brookesian Museum the first chameleon of this genus was discovered and described by the German zoologist Heinrich Kuhl in 1820.
features
The representatives of the genus Brookesia , sometimes also called Brookesia , are small, very graceful chameleons with a total length of only 100 to 125 mm. Brookesia micra is the smallest known reptile in the world. In contrast to the other two chameleon genera Calumma and Furcifer , which are native to Madagascar , they only have a rudimentary tail (stubby tail), which is about a third to a quarter of the body length. It can neither be rolled up in the way known for chameleons, nor is its gripping function well developed. The coloration of the animals varies depending on the species, but usually does not go beyond the basic tones of brown, gray, ocher and olive.
Common name
The German names "Erdchamäleon" or "Stummelschwanzchamäleon" for the representatives of this genus are used differently and lead to confusion over and over again. The name earth chameleon had been established for the genus Brookesia for many years , but was also used simultaneously for many species of the genus Rhampholeon , which is native to the African mainland . It was based on the earlier assumption that the animals were mainly on the ground. Scientific and popular scientific articles today use the term stubby-tailed chameleons for representatives of the genera Brookesia as well as Rhampholeon and Rieppeleon , as it is the most distinctive feature of these three genera. In earlier literature the animals were often referred to as "dwarf chameleons". The name is still often used in the English-speaking world as "dwarf" or "pygmy chameleon". In German, the common name dwarf chameleon is only used today for chameleons of the South African genus Bradypodion .
species
The genus includes about 30 species:
- Brookesia ambreensis Raxworthy & Nussbaum , 1995
- Brookesia antakarana Raxworthy & Nussbaum , 1995
- Brookesia bekolosy Raxworthy & Nussbaum , 1995
- Brookesia betschi Brygoo , Blanc & Domergue , 1974
- Brookesia bonsi Ramanantsoa , 1980
- Brookesia brunoi Crottini , Miralles , Glaw , Harris , Lima & Vences , 2012
- Brookesia brygooi Raxworthy & Nussbaum , 1995
- Brookesia confidens Glaw , Koehler , Townsend & Vences , 2012
- Brookesia decaryi Angel , 1939
- Brookesia dentata Mocquard , 1900
- Brookesia desperata Glaw , Koehler , Townsend & Vences , 2012
- Brookesia Ebenaui ( Boettger , 1880)
- Brookesia exarmata Schimmenti & Jesu , 1996
- Brookesia griveaudi Brygoo , Blanc & Domergue , 1974
- Brookesia karchei Brygoo , Blanc & Domergue , 1970
- Brookesia lambertoni Brygoo & Domergue , 1970
- Brookesia lineata Raxworthy & Nussbaum , 1995
- Brookesia micra Glaw , Koehler , Townsend & Vences , 2012
- Brookesia minima Boettger , 1893
- Brookesia perarmata ( Angel , 1933)
- Brookesia peyrierasi Brygoo & Domergue , 1974
- Brookesia ramanantsoai Brygoo & Domergue , 1975
- Brookesia stumpffi Boettger , 1894
- Brookesia superciliaris ( Kuhl , 1820)
- Brookesia therezieni Brygoo & Domergue , 1970
- Brookesia thieli Brygoo & Domergue , 1969
- Brookesia tristis Glaw , Köhler , Townsend & Vences , 2012
- Brookesia tuberculata Moquard , 1894
- Brookesia vadoni Brygoo & Domergue , 1968
- Brookesia valerieae Raxworthy , 1991
Brookesia lolontany and Brookesia nasus with the two subspecies B. nasus nasus and B. nasus pauliani wereassigned tothe newly established genus Palleon in 2013.
literature
- Édouard-Raoul Brygoo : Reptiles. Saurian Chamaeleonidae. Genre Brookesia et complément pour le genre Chamaeleo (= Faune de Madagascar. Vol. 47). ORSTOM, Paris 1978.
- Frank Glaw , Miguel Vences : Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Madagascar. 3. Edition. Vences & Glaw, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-929449-03-7 .
- John Edward Gray : Revision of the genera and species of Chamæleonidæ, with description of some new species. In: Proceedings of the Scientific Meetings of the Zoological Society of London. 1864, ISSN 0370-2774 , pp. 465-477, online .
- Charles JJ Klaver , Wolfgang Böhme : Chamaeleonidae (= Das Tierreich. Teilbd. 112). Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin et al. 1997, ISBN 3-11-015187-1 .
- Petr Nečas , Wolfgang Schmidt : Stubby-tailed chameleons. Miniature kites of the rainforest. The genera Brookesia and Rhampholeon. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-930612-48-8 .
- Franz Werner : To the knowledge of the skeleton of Rhampholeon spectrum. In: Works from the Zoological Institutes of the University of Vienna and the Trieste Zoological Station. Vol. 14, 1902, ZDB -ID 564650-9 , pp. 241-258.
- Franz Werner: Prodromus of a monograph of the chameleons. In: Zoological Yearbooks. Department for Systematics, Ecology and Geography of Animals. Vol. 15, Issue 3/4, 1902, ISSN 0044-5193 , pp. 295-460, digitized .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Hildenhagen: On the history and etymology of the generic name Brookesia Gray, 1865. In: Secretary. Vol. 7, No. 2, 2007, ISSN 1612-2399 , pp. 9-15.
- ↑ Werner 1902, Arb. Zool. Inst .: 246, 251.
- ↑ Werner 1902, Zool. Numbers: 305, footnote.
- ^ Brookesia in The Reptile Database
- ↑ Frank Glaw , Oliver Hawlitschek, Bernhard Ruthensteiner: A new genus name for an ancient Malagasy chameleon clade and a PDF-embedded 3D model of its skeleton. In: Salamandra . Vol. 49, No. 4, 2013, pp. 237-238, online .
