Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[Mujician]

Just a quick question - Why are monitors all called Varanus? Even the dwarf ones. When I was working in a tropical fish shop there were fish in the same familly that had different first names - I.E the eartheaters - Geophagus. They are related to Blue rams which are Microgeophagus - a dwarf geophagus species. Therefore - why are things like ackies and other dwarf monitors called something like Microvaranus. This way, when a new species is discovered/named and it appears somewhere we all know whether its dwarf or a big bugger.
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1.2.2 Leopard Gecko (Eublepharis Macularis)
2.1 Rankins Dragon (Pogona Henrilawsoni)
1.0 Western Hognose (Heterodon Nasicus)
0.1 Royal Python (Python Regius)
1.1 Saharan Sand Boa (Eryx Muelleri)
3.2 Kenyan Sand Boas (Eryx Colubrinus)

[shay_]

Every animal has a taxonomic classification including species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and domain. It begins to get complicated when a whole bunch of extra taxonomic levels get added inbetween, such as superphylum, subphylum and so on.

The genus Varanus does have a subgenus that separates the different groups of monitor lizards. An example would be the subgenus Odatria which is all the small monitors like ackies, tristis, glauerti and so on. The subgenus Polydaedalus includes the African monitors. The subgenus Euprepiosaurus includes the indicus complex and prasinus complex monitors. I don't recall off hand, but I know there is at least 9 subgenus's under the genus Varanus.

I don't know if that answered your question, but I gave it a shot

cheers

[miffikins]

Theres a good page on varanus.nl that has the Varanus 'family' tree which illustrates all the sub-genus'