Chris Anderson
Dr. House of Chameleons
Hi Everyone,
I thought you all might be interested to see the following paper:
One particularly interesting thing to come out of this work is how the subfamily designation has been reworked. In 1986, Klaver and Böhme split the family Chamaeleonidae into two subfamilies (Chamaeleoninae and Brookesiinae). Under this classification scheme, Brookesiinae included the genera Brookesia and Rhampholeon (and the genera Rieppeleon and Palleon when they were later split off from Rhampholeon and Brookesia, respectively), while Chamaeleoninae included all remaining genera. More recent genetic analysis, however, has show that this split rendered both subfamilies paraphyletic, causing most recent work to simply drop the subfamily designation all together. In this new article, Glaw has revamped the subgenera and made Brookesiinae include only the genera Brookesia and Palleon, with all other genera being included in Chamaeleoninae. This arrangement renders both groups monophyletic, and thus phylogenetically informative.
Chris
I thought you all might be interested to see the following paper:
Glaw, F. 2015. Taxonomic checklist of chameleons (Squamata: Chamaeleonidae). Vertebrate Zoology 65(2): 167-246. (Available online at: http://www.senckenberg.de/files/con...2/01_vertebrate_zoology_65-2_glaw_167-246.pdf)
This publication is a current list of all recognized species and subspecies of chameleon in their most current taxonomy. As you can see, there are currently 202 recognized chameleon species in 12 genera. In addition to a complete species list and taxonomic breakdown, the article follows with lists of references to all major taxonomic works on each species, and their synonyms, as well as basic notes on their distributions.
One particularly interesting thing to come out of this work is how the subfamily designation has been reworked. In 1986, Klaver and Böhme split the family Chamaeleonidae into two subfamilies (Chamaeleoninae and Brookesiinae). Under this classification scheme, Brookesiinae included the genera Brookesia and Rhampholeon (and the genera Rieppeleon and Palleon when they were later split off from Rhampholeon and Brookesia, respectively), while Chamaeleoninae included all remaining genera. More recent genetic analysis, however, has show that this split rendered both subfamilies paraphyletic, causing most recent work to simply drop the subfamily designation all together. In this new article, Glaw has revamped the subgenera and made Brookesiinae include only the genera Brookesia and Palleon, with all other genera being included in Chamaeleoninae. This arrangement renders both groups monophyletic, and thus phylogenetically informative.
Chris
