Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First, I would like to express my frustration with the lack of explanations available to average hobbyists such as myself. I have been trying to discover what genus names such as "Liasis" and "Morelia" actually mean. I know that latin is a dead language, so there would be no such thing as latin jargon. I have stumbled upon Latin->English dictionaries, and have had no luck discovering what genus titles mean. What is in a genus? I find it hard to believe that every race of animal isn't deserving of its own genus, considering it must have anatomical differences in order to be a separate species in the first place. In Jerry Walls "Pythons of the World" book it describes the Liasis genus is a rather nebulous fashion;

"One (rarely two) enlarged loreal; head shields fully developed; supralabial row with no to three sensory pits, no more than one or two deep; glossy brown with or without small pale spots or ringed black and orange; tail not prehensile.............Liasis"

I can agree with much of this description as I have yet to handle any member of Liasis that poses any supralabial pits. One point I would have to disagree with highly is the idea that members of Liasis do not have prehensile tails. As I reached for my White Lip tonight, he wrapped tightly around my arm. As she slithered down, her tail was tightly anchored around my arm with such force as to let her entire body go, dangling its entire body. If that isn't considered prehensile, what is? Would this be the main reason why White Lips at one point had "Leiopython" to themselves? If so, why move it into Liasis territory? There seems to be a lot of people giving scientific names out like Halloween candy. And that's fine. But in what publication or book can this be broken down to a rational and DETAILED explanation? The more I read, it seems the more holes I find. Looking foward to hearing some ideas/answers.
From,
John

`But in what publication or book can this be broken down to a rational and DETAILED explanation? The more I read, it seems the more holes I find. Looking foward to hearing some ideas/answers.'

Simple... you need to go find the papers in which the changes you're interested in were made. These would be in scientific journals or other academic manuscripts, many of which you could probably find at a good university's library. You're not going to find them at your local public library simply because they're not the most exciting things in the world, and most people don't give a damn about them. Finding things like the original descriptions of the genera Liasis and Morelia (which should contain explanations of the genus names, for instance), though, could be a bit more difficult, since both were described back in the 1840's (a bit of information, BTW, which you can get from www.reptile-database.org, which is a pretty useful reference), and most universities' libraries don't go that far back.

Hi John

First, I would like to express my frustration with the lack of explanations available to average hobbyists such as myself. I have been trying to discover what genus names such as "Liasis" and "Morelia" actually mean. I know that latin is a dead language, so there would be no such thing as latin jargon. I have stumbled upon Latin->English dictionaries, and have had no luck discovering what genus titles mean.

Well, Liasis as well as Morelia are generic names without a latin root. They mean nothing in a linguistic sence.

What is in a genus? I find it hard to believe that every race of animal isn't deserving of its own genus, considering it must have anatomical differences in order to be a separate species in the first place.

I asked this question a while ago on the old tax-forum...
http://forum.kingsnake.com/tax/messages/1608.html
There are some species concepts around....

In Jerry Walls "Pythons of the World" book it describes the Liasis genus is a rather nebulous fashion;

"One (rarely two) enlarged loreal; head shields fully developed; supralabial row with no to three sensory pits, no more than one or two deep; glossy brown with or without small pale spots or ringed black and orange; tail not prehensile.............Liasis"

Well Jerry doesn't stick to the current taxonomy but does his own thing more or less. He mentioned it at the beginning... So don't rely on this book for taxonomic names!

I can agree with much of this description as I have yet to handle any member of Liasis that poses any supralabial pits. One point I would have to disagree with highly is the idea that members of Liasis do not have prehensile tails.

Well, Liasis Gray 1842 is a sort of nasty genus as Gray failed to designate a type species back in 1842. A very short summery of what happend (sorry, might be bad english):
The genus Liasis introduced by Gray 1842 and in which Peters & Doria placed Liasis albertisii Peters & Doria, 1878 has led to high taxonomic confusion in the past. Gray introduced the generic name Liasis Gray for three species Liasis childreni (Gray 1842:44), Liasis olivacea (Gray, 1842:45) and Liasis amethistinus (Schneider, 1801:254) without designating a type species. In fact it has turned out that Gray actually described the species later known as Liasis mackloti Dumeril & Bibron rather than ‘Boa amethistina’ Schneider (McDowell 1975:31, footnote; Stimson & McDowell, 1986:331). Desmarest later designated ‘Boa amethistina’ Schneider (1846:337) as the type species of Liasis. In 1849 Gray subdivided Liasis into three sub-genera, namely Liasis (containing only L. childreni Gray), Simalia (Gray 1849:91-92) containing L. amethystinus and L. mackloti (Dumeril & Bibron) and Lisalia (Gray 1849:92-93) , containing only L. olivaceus Gray). Obviously most of the subsequent workers have overlooked Desmarest’s type designation for Liasis as i.e. McDowell (1975) stated “The Subgenus Liasis considered monotypic, for L. childreni Gray; this would appear to designate that species as the type” (McDowell, 1975:31).

As I reached for my White Lip tonight, he wrapped tightly around my arm. As she slithered down, her tail was tightly anchored around my arm with such force as to let her entire body go, dangling its entire body. If that isn't considered prehensile, what is?

No, John, it isn't! Have a look at M. viridis or M. nauta and you'll know what prehensile is Also look at carpet pythons.

Would this be the main reason why White Lips at one point had "Leiopython" to themselves? If so, why move it into Liasis territory?

Kluge 1993 based on a phylogenetic study figured out that albertisii is quite distinct from Liasis and therefor placed it into the newest available genus for this species and this was Leiopython Hubrecht 1879.

There seems to be a lot of people giving scientific names out like Halloween candy. And that's fine. But in what publication or book can this be broken down to a rational and DETAILED explanation? The more I read, it seems the more holes I find. Looking foward to hearing some ideas/answers.

I'll send you an email that might clear up all these questions more carefully.

Cheers,
Wulf
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http://www.leiopython.de ,
http://www.herpers-digest.com

Thank you Paalexan for your response, I will look into finding any python related papers, but I have a funny feeling I wont find them anyway. But a bigger thanks to Wulf for pretty much answering all of my questions in full and then some. On the topic of prehensile tails; I do have a Green Tree python and two Carpets. I also have a Blood. I would say the Blood python has the most prehensile of the tails; he can wrap the last inch of his tail around my pinky and take the life out of my finger in seconds flat. Then the carpets come in second, seeming to always use there tail to hook on to things, for support I would imagine. My GTP has a really prehensile tail, often curling the very tips of it. But it is very weak. She couldn't dangle from my arm like the carpets; she simply doesn't squeeze tight enough which leads to my next question; observations like this mean than any of the "prehensile tail" pythons have a prehensile tail to a varying degree, where some squeeze harder, or some just choose not to use their tail much at all. That isn't to say they couldn't; my blood rarely does this but every now and then he will use his tail to pretty much clamp on to my finger(s). So when my White Lip does this, she really reminds me of a carpet python; always wrapping her tail around my arm and anchoring on, observing with her head and free-form body movement. That's why I would have to say White lips have a prehensile tail. I really cant blame Hoser for his unsupported classifications; to me they are more like ideas as opposed to full term testing. That's what is going on in my mind lately; just small ideas that discern the interval between genus and species, and so on. I'm not here to change taxonomy or anyone's mind. But to me, if anything was deserving of its own isolated genus, I would say it should be the "python" Timoriensis. It includes the thick head shields that are always present on Scrubs of all kind (kinghorni. amethestyne). But to me, the infralabial pits resemble the Retic more than anything; it seems most members of Morelia have extremely heavy infralabial pits where the genus python has infralabial pits, but not as heavy, like the Timor python. I guess now could be a good time to ask what the scientific differences are between Morelia and Python are, but seeing as Walls synonomizes them, this could be up in the air until the world ends!

"Kluge 1993 based on a phylogenetic study figured out that albertisii is quite distinct from Liasis and therefore placed it into the newest available genus for this species and this was Leiopython Hubrecht 1879."

I could be overstaying my welcome here, but could you shed a little light as to what inferences were made by Kluge to distinguish Leiopython so far from Liasis? You have already answered all of my questions, so don't feel you have to waste your time. Just some food for thought.
PS-you said you would email me. My email account is no longer active so I got a new one: sealsandcrofts@hotmail.com. Sorry for the inconvenience if you already wrote to me.
From,
John
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"People change and your changing"
Seals and Crofts 1976

`I could be overstaying my welcome here, but could you shed a little light as to what inferences were made by Kluge to distinguish Leiopython so far from Liasis?'

I'm not him, but I got a chance to look at Kluge's paper... Kluge's study is based on skeletal features and scalation. The way he's written it out is a little confusing for direct comparisons betwen genera, but it looks like Leiopython is distinguished from Liasis by:
having 7 or 8 rather than 5 ot 6 palatine teeth;
having the orbital separated from rather than in contact with the ectopterygoid and/or maxilla;
having the choanal process of the palatine make contact with rather than separated from the vomer;
having the posterior margin of the choanal process slightly concave rather than deeply concave;
having the height of the dentary teeth change markedly rather than only slightly;
having the first geneial scale long rather than short compared to other throat scales;
having an apical sensory organ present on many posterior upper-body scales
having a tall and sharp rather than low and relatively round ridge present on the mid-dorsal surface of the median end of the postorbital;
having the rostral scale with rather than without thermoreceptive pits.

To be honest, a lot of those characters don't mean anything to me...

Patrick Alexander

Hi Wulf,
On the derivation of the generic names of Morelia and Liasis et al, I think they may have a basis in classical mythology.
John Edward Gray has been criticised as being responsible for the creation of a number of "meaningless" names in his taxonomic works. I am not so sure about this. Gray was a great scholar in the classical sense, and I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find that some of his confusing generic names are actually derived from classical mythology. As for Morelia, well from memory, I think MORELIA may be associated with CERBERUS of Greek mythology. I can’t recall now, but I think MORELIA was either a little known ugly brother of CERBERUS, or perhaps the name of one of the ugly heads. Don’t go rushing off to check your books on Greek Mythology though, unless they are from the 19th century or earlier. Modern works on mythology are mostly incomplete derivatives of these earlier works and are not of much help with the more obscure deities and myths I have found.
On the derivation of LIASIS, well it could be possibly derived from LI who was a powerful deity from a creation myth of China and was one of the grandsons of the Sky God Zhuan Xu. It was the function LI to help separate the sky from the earth, and so stop the world from degenerating into chaos. Given the taxonomic history of the genus LIASIS, I think LI must have been sleeping on the job.
An interesting Gray name, the subgenus LISALIA – is possibly derived from LISA, which is part of a complex creation myth of the FON people of Benin involving twin pairs of Gods. LISA was a supreme being in the form of a Sun God that controlled the day. LISA, along with its twin MAWU, the Moon Goddess and controller of the night, formed part of the body of a gigantic rainbow serpent (AIDO-HWEDO) that supported the heavens.
As for his subgenus SIMALIA, I think I have figured it out, but I’ll leave that one to you guys to look up…

Richard Wells

Isn't Morel a type of mushroom. Just a suggestion for the origin of Morelia....

Hi Richard,

thanks for you input. Really sounds interesting

The only other "Morelia" I know is a city in Mexico.

Cheers,
Wulf
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http://www.leiopython.de ,
http://www.herpers-digest.com

Just as a hint, many many snake genus names are in Greek, not Latin. Not Morelia and Liasis, but many others. So the term 'Latin name' is sort of a misnomer. I have a book on dinosaurs with all the names translated,

... ... and that helped me learn some of the Greek ones. But I'm still clueless on most of 'em too.

No matter their origin (Greek, Latin, English etc.), all scientific names are latinized. That is why scientific names are also referred to as Latin names. Scientific names have genders, since they are Latin words. For example, when L. M. Klauber named one of the Rosy boas after his own wife Grace, the latinized form of the name becomes gracia.

If a species is transferred from a genus with a feminine gender to one with a masculine gender or vice versa, the specific name has to be changed to match the gender of the new genus. This is a major source of taxonomic instability and one of the many reasons why unnecessary taxonomic changes (e.g. correcting past grammatical mistakes of long established names; dogmatic intolerance of paraphyletic taxa) should be discouraged.

That it's usually pretty useless to look them up in a Latin dictionary.
But I guess that explains why you see both genders used in specific names depending on where you look.
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?