Herpetology - Tumblr Posts
I showed you Cereza.
Now behold, her mate Olimar.
He's hiding in a skull because he's shy and evil
I don't have much to post atm, so have a meme. Second picture is the gecko in question: Gertie! . #artist #artistofinstagram #artistoninstagram #memes #meme #herpetology #lizard #lizardsofinstagram #gecko #geckosofinstagram #leopardgecko #leopardgeckosofinstagram #geckomemes #GertieTheGecko #geckos #imadeameme #herps https://www.instagram.com/p/B51LbMdl7VC/?igshid=t2c8w0ywg5me
Facultative parthenogenesis ability was discovered in crocodiles for the first time ever!
"The American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) was taken into captivity in 2002 when she was 2 years old and placed in an enclosure at Parque Reptilandia in Costa Rica. She remained alone for the next 16 years. But in January 2018, a clutch of 14 eggs was found in the enclosure.
Virgin births, also known as facultative parthenogenesis (FP), is a type of asexual reproduction in species that would normally reproduce sexually. Scientists have documented it in birds, sharks, lizards and snakes in captivity, among other species. Until now, it had never been recorded among Crocodilia — the order that includes crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials.
They also said the discovery of a virgin birth in a crocodile means FP has now been found in both birds, which descended from dinosaurs, and a crocodilian, suggesting a common evolutionary origin. Birds and crocodilians are the remaining representatives of archosaurs — the group that also included dinosaurs and pterosaurs.
"This new evidence offers tantalizing insights into the possible reproductive capabilities of extinct archosaurian relatives of crocodilians, notably the Pterosauria and Dinosauria," they wrote."
i never thought I would need to know the difference between crocodile and alligator but holy shit the last month has been filled with reptile lore
Alligators have round snouts
Crocodiles have pointy snouts
A=round
C=pointy
WHAT???
WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS???
Yellow Sea Snake (Hydrophis platurus xanthos), family Elapidae, Costa Rica
Venomous.
This is an all yellow subspecies of the Yellow-bellied or Pelagic Sea Snake.
photograph by Alejandro Solórzano
So today I made 2 discoveries!
#1: There exists an "emotional support" rubber chicken, complete with removable vest:
#2: My bearded dragon, Saffron, is approximately the size of a rubber chicken:
I have done a Thing™ with this information.
BEHOLD! A MAN CHICKEN
Why is this the gecko thats in my nightmares?
Pernatty Lagoon Knob Tailed Gecko (Nephrurus deleani) family Carphodactylidae, Pernatty Lagoon, South Africa
photograph by Kai Goold
Bolt on da skateboard ^O^ 🐢
Bolt is a sulcata tortoise (african spur) o.o she is 15 and very social with me but no one else o.O
Bolt loves the rain
MY BABY BOLTINA
“how could you form a bond with a tortoise” .. easily.?
Boltina being silly per usual •v•
very cool
Meet Uroplatus garamaso, a new leaf-tailed gecko from Madagascar!
Uroplatus garamaso are absolute masters of camouflage. During the day, they rest with their heads down and fringes expanded, rendering them practically invisible. Here, I have revealed the outline of the gecko against the tree trunk. As you can imagine, that makes them pretty difficult to spot in the wild.
Fortunately, at night, they wake up and prowl the branches, and can often be found up to a few metres off the ground hunting for invertebrates.
This remarkable gecko has been known about for over 20 years, and has even been in the pet trade for well over a decade. But only now have we finally amassed enough information on it to be able to formally describe it and give it a name. The trouble was that it is extremely similar to Uroplatus henkeli, which is also found nearby. The key to distinguishing them turned out to be the colour of the eye, and the tip of the tongue, which is pink in U. garamaso (left), and blackish in U. henkeli (right).
These geckos open their mouths as a warning signal, so looking at this feature is quite easy. But we are not sure why the mouth colour so often differs between species. Some more behavioural studies are needed.
The new species was described on 15 August 2023 in the Open Access journal Salamanadra. You can read the paper here.
Two sweet forgs I had to save, they got stuck in my egress window hehe
A collection of Very. Good boi. SNEKS!
I have been down a bit lately and your blog brings me so much joy. I don't suppose you have any good pictures of rat snakes being just silly goofy guys? I love them. (Colubrids in general are just Very Good Snakes and I love the ones we've got here in Ohio.)
GOOFY RAT SNAKE EH???
Here are some leucistic Texas and Black Rat Snakes being goofuses...
photograph by RodentPro.com, LLC
photograph by underground reptiles
photograph by Anthony Caponetto
Guys look at this cool tree i found one time, it's bark is weird looking.
And here's are some snails I found in a pond too
And here's some salamanders as well
Checkerboard Worm Lizard (Trogonophis wiegmanni), family Trogonophidae, northern Morocco
Legless lizard.
photograph by Kristian Stengaard Munkholm
This is something I've never seen ANYONE tackle as a question, and I'd love your best answer. Why are some reptiles on a temperature determined sex differentiation system, and others on a chromosomal one? Any idea on how that came about?
Answering ‘why’ questions in evolutionary biology (and biology as a whole) is extremely difficult. Who knows? is the honest answer for the vast majority of questions; speculation - informed speculation - is often the best we can do.
Typically, chromosomal or genetic sex determination (GSD) results in a ~1:1 ratio of male to female offspring. This can be advantageous when the temperature of incubation does not differentially influence the fitness of sexes; that is to say, if males and females are both equally aided or abetted by temperature differences during incubation.
However, where temperature has differential influence on the fitness of individuals of different sexes, an environmental sex determination (ESD) system should be evolutionarily favourable; if males have superior fitness to females at low temperature, then selection will favour males over females at these temperatures, and it is easy to imagine the evolutionary potential of that relationship. This mechanism is called the ‘Charnov-Bull’ model[1].
The dynamics of the Charnov-Bull model might differ between lineages; for instance in some cases, hot and cold temperatures might favour one sex, while intermediate temperatures favour the other; a parabolic relationship between sex and temperature might then exist[2,3].
The Charnov-Bull model was empirically shown to be true of Amphibolurus muricatus, a short-lived agamid lizard, by Warner and Shine in 2008[2]. In their experiment, they exposed eggs to different temperatures, while manipulating the sex of the lizards directly by hormone injection, and were thus able to demonstrate differential fitness effects on sexes at different temperatures.
It has been suggested that reptiles are particularly prone to transitioning from GSD to ESD, because their incubation environment is so variable[4,5], which might explain the prevalence of ESD in reptiles, relative to other vertebrates.
Differential fitness of sexes is not the only evolutionary explanation for the prevalence of ESD; a further three have been proposed: (1) ESD is ancestral and selectively almost neutral, and is thus perpetuated; (2) ESD promotes group fitness by permitting adaptive control of sex ratio; and (3) ESD permits inbreeding avoidance by producing single-sex clutches[3]. These, however, have little empirical support, and are probably less important than Charnov-Bull dynamics[3].
A whole lot more research is needed in this field, because the real answer to your second question is no, not really. Nobody really knows, but a lot of people are speculating. And that is intriguing. Novel approaches provide great potential for future research[3], and perhaps we may be able to answer the why and and the hows. But for now, real answers just don’t exist.
References:
[1]Charnov, E.L. & J. Bull (1977) When is sex environmentally determined? Nature, 266(5605):828-830 [Read here]
[2]Warner, D.A. & R. Shine (2008) The adaptive significance of temperature-dependent sex determination in a reptile. Nature, 451:566-569
[3]Janzen, F.J. & P.C. Philips (2006) Exploring the evolution of environmental sex determination, especially in reptiles. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 19:1775-1784
[4]Georges, A., T. Ezaz, A.E. Quinn & S.D. Sarre (2010) Are reptiles predisposed to temperature-dependent sex determination? Sexual Development, 4:7-15 [Read here]
[5]Sarre, S.D., T. Ezaz & A. Georges (2011) Transitions between sex-determining systems in reptiles and amphibians. Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, 12_391-406
Come vote for my toad pls :3