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I see people refering to blue tegus as Tupinambis teguixin, but from everything I've seen they look more like a closer relative to T. merianae or T. rufescens.(This based solely on observations of morphological characteristics) They have similar body scales to the larger tegus and I noticed the two loreal scales on the head as compared to the Colombians which have only one. The babies also resemble the offspring from the larger two species. If anyone can offer any information on scientific publications dealing with this species/subspecies/color morph I would greatly appreciate it.

The blue tegu story is sort of convoluted and is clouded by peoples personal opinions instead of facts. The origin of them is from a shipment the St.Pierre's got from Colombia wherein they had ordered T.teguixin. They noticed there was two different types of tegu in the shipment, and so began breeding them individually and called the one group the blue tegu. Because of their inadequate familiarity with tegu taxonomy, they decided that the blues had to be either a new subspecies or a new species all together. They strongly pushed it being a supspecies of T.teguixin (which it clearly is not) and this has become firmly entrenched in the tegu hobbyist community as you still see people saying this.
I think the first dissenter to this idea was a graduate student from Canada who does research on tegus. From what he's told me, people who saw the animals he was working on kept asking why was he working on the blue tegu when it was the most expensive and where did he get them from. The species he was working on was guaranteed T.merianae, and so he started looking into the blue story and found that the belief at the time was T.teguixin, which made no sense other than prior to 1995, what is currently called T.merianae used to be T.teguixin, and what is now T.teguixin used to be called T.nigropunctatus and maybe this is where the mix-up came from. However, it turned out the all it really was was because a breeder had called it T.teguixin, that's what it must be.
Since then, it has come to light that upon looking at the morphological data, there's no way blues are T.teguixin. Anyone still claiming that only shows they spout what others spout and don't know how to identify the various species. The Canadian guy says that blues are most probably T.merianae. Many hobbyists hold onto the idea that they aren't and must be something else. Evidently some researchers down in South America (including some of the scientists that have described some of the newer tegu species) have gotten ahold of blue tegus from American breeders and their conclusion was on the basis of morphological evidence, the blue tegu is T.merianae. Many hobbyists are still reluctant to accept this, and truth be told, with modern development in genetics, the blues may indeed turn out to be a new species but this would have to be tested. The best information on "natural" blues is some photos of wild tegus that hobbyists identify as blue tegus have come out of French Guyana and Suriname (the north coast of South America) which is currently beyond the distribution of T.merianae on record. However, South America is very poorly documented for species and distributions, it's entirely possible and likely this is just a further distribution of T.merianae. On the other hand, the Amazon river may be a sufficient barrier to have promoted enough genetic divergence between the south and north sides that those on the north side are possibly a separate species (although it hasn't done so in other reptile species). Boiled down, scientists' opinions are that blues are T.merianae, many hobbyists' opinions are that it is not.

Thanks for the reply. I thought the names I've seen tossed around were incorrect. I remember reading the story in the Vivarium magazine when Ron St. Pierre first imported them and thinking they didn't look like T. teguixin. Once again thanks for the reply.

I know someone that has some photo's of some blue tegus in the wild. Some posted some pics on the internet and they were able to track down the guy. More info available...just e-mail me.

JL-Exotics@hotmail.com
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John Light
JL Exotics
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