. Current herpetology. Reptiles; Herpetology. 30 Current Herpetol. 22(1) 2003 to the water skink from Sulawesi as Tropi- dophorus apulus, most likely by erroneously copying Bacon's unpublished name, T. aphi- lus. However, neither of these names are actually available in accordance with Interna- tional Code of Zoological Nomenclature, because the name Tropidophorus aphilus remains unpublished (see above) and the name Tropidophorus apulus, when appearing in hobbyists' magazines, has never been accom- panied by information to fill the minimum requirements of the code as an original description of
. Current herpetology. Reptiles; Herpetology. 30 Current Herpetol. 22(1) 2003 to the water skink from Sulawesi as Tropi- dophorus apulus, most likely by erroneously copying Bacon's unpublished name, T. aphi- lus. However, neither of these names are actually available in accordance with Interna- tional Code of Zoological Nomenclature, because the name Tropidophorus aphilus remains unpublished (see above) and the name Tropidophorus apulus, when appearing in hobbyists' magazines, has never been accom- panied by information to fill the minimum requirements of the code as an original description of a new species-group name, such as that regarding the holotype and diagnostic characters (International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, 1999). The genus Tropidophorus belongs to the subfamily Lygosominae of the family Scin- cidae, and is characterized by more or less aquatic habits and a few morphological fea- tures, such as a superficially located tympa- num. A total of 22 species, distributed in both continental and insular parts of Southeast Asia, are currently recognized for this genus (Smith, 1923; Taylor, 1963; Brown and Alcala, 1980; Zhao and Adler, 1993; Hikida and Ota, 1994; Manthey and Grossmann, 1997; Hikida et al., 2002). In most scientific publications except Brown and Alcala (1980: see Discus- sion for details), the Sulawesi population of Tropidophorus has been referred to as T grayi following Rooij (1915), who first exam- ined the taxonomic status of this island popu- lation on the basis of specimens from "Luhu and Makassar (=Ujung Pandang), Celebes" (Fig. 1). Tropidophorus grayi was originally described from the Philippines (Giinther, 1961), and has been recorded from Luzon, Polillo, Leyte, Negros, Mastabe, and Cebu of this archipelago (Brown and Alcala, 1980), besides Sulawesi. Recently one of us (AR) collected two addi- tional specimens of Tropidophorus from South Sulawesi. Comparisons of these and other specimens from Sulawesi with specimens
Size: 1400px × 1784px
Photo credit: © Central Historic Books / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcollectionbiodi, booksubjectherpetology, booksubjectreptiles
