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Red Ink AUS Crocdoc Red Ink AUS Krusty Crocdoc Lone Wolf Red Ink AUS |
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Red Ink AUS View Profile |
New Acanthurus Classifications
I thought this might be of interest. Just picked up a 2008 published field guide "A complete guide to Reptiles of Australia" by Steve Wilson and Gerry Swann. This is one of the most if not "the" most "trusted" and up to date field guides published here in OZ. Anyway i was having a read through the varanid section and found that there is a new ackie sub-species classification (well new to me anyway). Varanus acathurus insulanicus, it is larger than V.a.a 25cm SVL and is un-mistakable in it’s colouration. Instead on your typical red or yellow it is black and yellow and inhabits islands off the cost of the Northern Territory of Australia. I don’t have an image of it but try google (i doubt you’ll find one though). It is quite a stunning animal as it does not have the same reticulated pattern of V.a.a but rather broken bandings of yellow on black background. I also found in the book that V.a.b is now seen as a different species to V.a.a altogether and no longer classified as a sub-species. It has been given the common name of "Black-spotted Spiny-tailed monitor" with the scientific name of varanus baritji. Might have to stop calling them "yellow" ackie lol. Cheers, |
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| 10/19/09 07:16pm |
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Crocdoc View Profile |
Message To: Red Ink AUS In reference to Message Id: 2086068 New Acanthurus Classifications
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| 10/19/09 07:57pm |
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Red Ink AUS View Profile |
Message To: Crocdoc In reference to Message Id: 2086084 New Acanthurus Classifications
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| 10/19/09 08:00pm |
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Krusty View Profile |
Message To: Red Ink AUS In reference to Message Id: 2086086 New Acanthurus Classifications
White’s Monitor (V. baritji) is a totally different species, but very similar to V. acanthurus except that instead of ocelli it has a broken reticulated pattern and a very, very lemon yellow underside of the throat usually. It’s kept and bred in captivity, but not in U.S. collections that I’m aware of. Someone on another forum alluded to calling all V. acanthurus the same without subspecies designations. I’m also not sure why the field guide did this as it’s been commonly accepted that the "red" Ackie (Vaa) is from the upper and western portion of V.a. range and the "yellow" (Vab) across the lower half with them being morphologically different (tail length vs. body and how they got named, head structure, spike length), different egg sizes, different pattern and no proof of naturally-occurring intergrades to say that they just sort of change and blend depending on range, etc. There certainly is a ton of variability in how this animal looks in different locales, but I seem to always say "red" or "yellow" very quickly in my mind - even the virtually all black Vaa’s in Pilbara, WA you’ll see photographed on flickr from time to time. The three have been accepted as subspecies for 20 years and now someone in a book just up and decided the subspecies isn’t valid it seems??? |
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| 10/19/09 09:06pm |
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Crocdoc View Profile |
Message To: Krusty In reference to Message Id: 2086129 New Acanthurus Classifications
Quote: no proof of naturally-occurring intergrades
There would have to be, or else they’d be considered separate species considering that their ranges are contiguous. Quote: and now someone in a book just up and decided
Wilson and Swan may not be familiar names to you, but in Australia they’re well above the level of just ’someone in a book’. If they have chosen to drop a subspecies it’s highly likely that they have good reason for it, rightly or wrongly, based on someone’s taxonomic research or their own findings. I imagine it’d be similar to the reasoning behind Varanus albigularis ionidesi not being considered a valid taxon. It’s not enough to be able to pick one ’subspecies’ from another while looking at photos out of context, unless you are at the site of collection and can say without a doubt that the individuals with appearance X always come from the range in which X is supposed to occur, rather than Y. |
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| 10/20/09 06:28pm |
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Lone Wolf View Profile |
Message To: Crocdoc In reference to Message Id: 2086527 New Acanthurus Classifications
If you can’t right click it, will it let you select "copy image location"? Cody |
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| 10/20/09 07:30pm |
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Red Ink AUS View Profile |
Message To: Lone Wolf In reference to Message Id: 2086563 New Acanthurus Classifications
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| 10/20/09 10:08pm |
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