Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Been out of US last 3 months, and noticed June 2004 issue of Iguana, Journal of the international iguana society had an article by B. Hollingsworth regarding chuckwalla Sauramalus Obesus being replaced by Sauramalus Ater. It appears that Ater and Obesus are nearly indistinguishable, and since Ater is the older of the two names, Obesus is out -- making just about every book addressing chuckwallas out of date. The official latin name for Chuckwallas in the US is now Sauramalus Ater .... ? Being that it appears that the name ater came out only 2 years prior to Obesa, I think they should have gone with the more commonly used name. Anyone have a comment about this ?

Good to see you visit the chuck forum. Is it John? Well not only are the US chucks ater now but all the mainland chucks are. There is some controversy here as size and scale counts have been ignored when making this change and I probably think in the future research will show otherwise and names will be changed again. I tend to agree with you about the retention of obesus due to the anount of literature out there. There was even an proposal submitted to the IUZN to retain it by a bunch of heavy hitters in the pro herp community-Montanucci, Hobart Smith, Adler, Auth, Ralph Axtell, Ted Case, Chiszar, Collins, Roger Conant, Robert Murphy, Petren, and Stebbins (1999 Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 56(4): 226) petitioned the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to give precedence to the name S. obesus over the name S. ater. Users of this list should continue to recognize S. obesus as the current specific name until the ICZN rules on the matter. Well rules are rules so they did officially change the name as of March 2004. All subspecies were dropped also. Glad to see you visit. Tom

Chuckwalla
Sauromalus ater Duméril, 1856
No image available.

Taxonomic Comments:
Hollingsworth (1998 Herpetological Monographs 12: 38-191) relegated S. obesus to the synonymy of S. ater, and further synonymized the subspecies S. o. multiforaminatus and S. o. tumidus under S. ater. Chuckwalla is the standard common name for S. ater.
Powell, Collins and Hooper (1998 A Key to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Continental United States and Canada. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence. vi 131 pp.) continued to use obesus for this lineage.
Montanucci, Smith, Adler, Auth, Axtell, Case, Chiszar, Collins, Conant, Murphy, Petren, and Stebbins (1999 Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 56(4): 226) petitioned the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to give precedence to the name S. obesus over the name S. ater. Users of this list should continue to recognize S. obesus as the current specific name until the ICZN rules on the matter.
Montanucci, Smith, Adler, Auth, Axtell, Case, Chiszar, Collins, Conant, Murphy, Petren, and Stebbins (2001 Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 58(1): 37-40) formally petitioned the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to give precedence to the name S. obesus over the name S. ater. Users of this list should continue to recognize S. obesus as the current specific name until the ICZN rules on the matter.
McDiarmid, de Quieroz, Beaman, Crother, Etheridge, Flores-Villela, Frost, Grismer, Hollingsworth, Kearney, McGuire, Wright, and Zug (2002 Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 59(1): 45-48) petitioned the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to reject the proposal of Montanucci et al. (1999, 2001). Users of this list should continue to recognize S. obesus as the current specific name until the ICZN rules on the matter.
Collins & Taggart (2002 Standard Common and Current Scientific Names for North American Amphibians, Turtles, Reptiles, and Crocodilians. Fifth Edition) submitted for consideration the proposal to synonymize the subspecies of S. obesus by Hollingsworth (1998 op. cit.) to a lizard systematist group composed of Kevin de Queiroz, Bradford Hollingsworth, Jimmy A. McGuire, Richard R. Montanucci, Robert Powell, Tod W. Reeder, Jack W. Sites, Jr., Robert C. Stebbins, James M. Walker, John J. Wiens, and Kelly Zamudio, and they agreed.
On 31 March 2004, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature published (Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 61(1): 74-75) a ruling that gave the name Sauromalus ater Duméril 1856 precedence over the name Sauromalus obesus (Baird 1858). This change will appear in the next (sixth) edition of Standard Common and Current Scientific Names for North American Amphibians, Turtles, Reptiles and Crocodilians. Users of that list are advised to adopt the name Sauromalus ater. The standard common name remains Chuckwalla.

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