Colored iguanas

Colored iguanas
	Polychrus acutirostris
Systematics
Superordinate :	Scale lizards (Lepidosauria)
Order :	Scale reptiles (Squamata)
without rank:	Toxicofera
without rank:	Iguana (Iguania)
Family :	Polychrotidae
Genre :	Colored iguanas
Scientific name of the family
	Polychrotidae
	Fitzinger , 1843
Scientific name of the genus
	Polychrus
	Cuvier , 1817

The colored iguanas ( Polychrus ) are a genus of the iguanas (Iguania) that occur in Central and South America and on the islands of the Caribbean .

features

They are medium-sized and slender lizards, mostly green or brown in color. Her toes, in contrast to Anolis no prison slats at the bottom and are not broadened. Instead, they have graspable hands and feet similar to chameleons . The tail is also slightly graspable, but primarily serves to maintain balance. The males of most species have a colored throat flag that can be raised through the hyoid bone and is used in courtship and in threatening and imposing behavior between conspecifics. All colored iguanas are insectivores.

Systematics

Polychrus was first placed with the genus Anolis and other genera in the subfamily Polychrotinae in the family of the iguanas (Iguanidae) until the subfamily was raised to the rank of a family by Frost and Etheridge in 1989. In 2004 the same authors took six genera out of the family in a study of the internal systematics of the Polychrotidae and placed them in the newly established family Leiosauridae , so that now only Polychrus and Anolis with over 350 species belonged to the family. At the end of 2012, Anolis was assigned to the family Dactyloidae , so that Polychrus remained the only genus in the monotypical family Polychrotidae.

There are seven species within the genus Polychrus :

Polychrus acutirostris Spix, 1825
Polychrus femoralis Werner, 1910
Polychrus gutturosus Berthold, 1846
Polychrus jacquelinae Koch , Venegas, Garcia-Bravo & Böhme, 2011
Polychrus liogaster Boulenger, 1908
Polychrus marmoratus (Linnaeus, 1758)
Polychrus peruvianus (Noble, 1924)

swell

Wilfried Westheide , Reinhard Rieger (Hrsg.): Special zoology. Volume 2: Vertebrates or Skull Animals. Spectrum - Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg et al. 2004, ISBN 3-8274-0307-3 .

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b U. Schlüter: Colorful iguanas - way of life, care, reproduction . KUS-Verlag, Rheinstetten, 2013
↑ Darrel R. Frost, Richard Etheridge, Daniel Janies, Tom A. Titus: Total evidence, sequence alignment, evolution of polychrotid lizards, and a reclassification of the Iguania (Squamata, Iguania) (= American Museum Novitates. No. 3343, ISSN 0003-0082 ). American Museum of Natural History, New York NY 2001, online .
↑ Kirsten E. Nicholson, Brian I. Crother, Craig Guyer, Jay M. Savage : It is time for a new classification of anoles (Squamata: Dactyloidae) (= Zootaxa . 3477). Magnolia Press, Auckland 2012, ISBN 978-1-77557-010-3 , digital version (PDF; 8.24 MB) .

Web links

Commons : Polychrus - collection of images, videos and audio files

Polychrus in The Reptile Database

[SCH-1] U. Schlüter: Colorful iguanas - way of life, care, reproduction . KUS-Verlag, Rheinstetten, 2013

[2] Darrel R. Frost, Richard Etheridge, Daniel Janies, Tom A. Titus: Total evidence, sequence alignment, evolution of polychrotid lizards, and a reclassification of the Iguania (Squamata, Iguania) (= American Museum Novitates. No. 3343, ISSN 0003-0082 ). American Museum of Natural History, New York NY 2001, online .

[3] Kirsten E. Nicholson, Brian I. Crother, Craig Guyer, Jay M. Savage : It is time for a new classification of anoles (Squamata: Dactyloidae) (= Zootaxa . 3477). Magnolia Press, Auckland 2012, ISBN 978-1-77557-010-3 , digital version (PDF; 8.24 MB) .