Emerald Monitors
and their
kin.
Relationships within the
Varanus prasinus complex.
International authorities Bernd Eidenmüller and
Rudolf Wicker examine a family tree that has
become something of an enigma.
I
n recent years a great amount of scientific
research has been devoted to the Varanus
prasinus complex. In 1942 Mertens described
the emerald monitors in his monograph ‘Die Familie
der Warane’. In addition to the nominate form
Varanus prasinus prasinus he also noted the
subspecies known at the time; V. p. beccarii and
V. p. kordensis. In 1950 Mertens added the
description of another subspecies, V. p. bogerti from
the D'Entrecasteaux Archipelago. It was only with
the revision of the V. prasinus complex and the
description of V. telenesetes by Sprackland in 1991
that interest in the tree monitors was rekindled.
Since then, several new species have been
scientifically described (V. boehmei, Jacobs 2003;
Varanus macraei.
Image by fivespots.
V. macraei, Böhme & Jacobs 2001; and V. reisingeri,
Eidenmüller & Wicker 2004) and some taxa
previously listed as subspecies have been raised
into species rank (V. beccarii, Doria 1875; V. bogerti,
Mertens 1950; and V. kordensis, A.B. Meyer 1874).
Initially, the tree monitors of the V. prasinus group
and the Pacific monitors of the V. indicus group were
together summarized in the subgenus
Euprepiosaurus. In their study published in 2016,
Bucklitsch et al found that the differences between
the members of the two complexes were more
substantial than previously believed, and they
therefore introduced the new subgenus
Hapturosaurus for the tree monitors.