Standard Common and Current Scientific Names for North American Amphibians, Turtles, Reptiles & Crocodilians
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STANDARD COMMON AND CURRENT SCIENTIFIC NAMES FOR NORTH AMERICAN AMPHIBIANS, TURTLES, REPTILES & CROCODILIANS Sixth Edition Joseph T. Collins TraVis W. TAGGart The Center for North American Herpetology THE CEN T ER FOR NOR T H AMERI ca N HERPE T OLOGY www.cnah.org Joseph T. Collins, Director The Center for North American Herpetology 1502 Medinah Circle Lawrence, Kansas 66047 (785) 393-4757 Single copies of this publication are available gratis from The Center for North American Herpetology, 1502 Medinah Circle, Lawrence, Kansas 66047 USA; within the United States and Canada, please send a self-addressed 7x10-inch manila envelope with sufficient U.S. first class postage affixed for four ounces. Individuals outside the United States and Canada should contact CNAH via email before requesting a copy. A list of previous editions of this title is printed on the inside back cover. THE CEN T ER FOR NOR T H AMERI ca N HERPE T OLOGY BO A RD OF DIRE ct ORS Joseph T. Collins Suzanne L. Collins Kansas Biological Survey The Center for The University of Kansas North American Herpetology 2021 Constant Avenue 1502 Medinah Circle Lawrence, Kansas 66047 Lawrence, Kansas 66047 Kelly J. Irwin James L. Knight Arkansas Game & Fish South Carolina Commission State Museum 915 East Sevier Street P. O. Box 100107 Benton, Arkansas 72015 Columbia, South Carolina 29202 Walter E. Meshaka, Jr. Robert Powell Section of Zoology Department of Biology State Museum of Pennsylvania Avila University 300 North Street 11901 Wornall Road Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17120 Kansas City, Missouri 64145 Travis W. Taggart Sternberg Museum of Natural History Fort Hays State University 3000 Sternberg Drive Hays, Kansas 67601 Front cover images of an Eastern Collared Lizard (Crotaphytus collaris) and Cajun Chorus Frog (Pseudacris fouquettei) by Suzanne L. Collins, The Center for North American Herpetol- ogy, Lawrence, Kansas. STANDARD COMMON AND CURRENT SCIENTIFIC NAMES FOR NORTH AMERICAN AMPHIBIANS, TURTLES, REPTILES & CROCODILIANS Sixth Edition JOSEPH T. COLLINS Herpetologist Kansas Biological Survey The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas 66047 & TRAVIS W. TAGGAR T Associate Curator of Herpetology Sternberg Museum of Natural History Fort Hays State University Hays, Kansas 67601 2009 THE CEN T ER FOR NOR T H AMERI ca N HERPE T OLOGY Appropriate citation of this publication is as follows: Collins, Joseph T. and Travis W. Taggart. 2009. Standard Common and Current Scientific Names for North American Amphibians, Turtles, Reptiles, and Crocodilians. Sixth Edition. Publication of The Center for North Ameri- can Herpetology, Lawrence. iv + 44 pp. © 2009 by Joseph T. Collins & Travis W. Taggart Published April 2009 ISBN 0–9721937–1–5 Printed on acid-free paper. Printed by the Mennonite Press Newton, Kansas ii CONTENTS Introduction ..................................................................................................1 List of Current Scientific and Standard Common Names Class Amphibia Frogs (Order Anura) ................................................................................6 Salamanders (Order Caudata) ...............................................................10 Class Chelonia Straightneck Turtles (Order Cryptodira) ...............................................17 Class Eusuchia Crocodilians (Order Crocodylia)...........................................................20 Class Reptilia Amphisbaenians (Order Squamata) ......................................................21 Lizards (Order Squamata) .....................................................................21 Snakes (Order Squamata) ......................................................................27 Alien Species .............................................................................................37 Literature Cited ..........................................................................................42 About the Authors ......................................................................................43 iii Dedicated to the Memory of Carolus Linnaeus 23 May 1707 — 10 January 1778 John Edwards Holbrook 31 December 1796 — 8 September 1871 Charles Robert Darwin 12 February 1809 — 19 April 1882 Francis Harry Compton Crick 6 April 1928 — 28 July 2004 & with deep appreciation to James Dewey Watson whose combined contributions to science are amply reflected in this work iv INTRODUCTION This sixth edition of Standard Common and Current Scientific Names for North American Amphibians, Turtles, Reptiles, and Crocodilians, as was the case in the first five editions, is a checklist and reference to the standardized common names and currently recognized scientific names of all genera, spe- cies, and subspecies of amphibians, turtles, reptiles, and crocodilians native to the United States and Canada. When the number of native North American species is combined with the 64 introduced (non-native) taxa, this checklist covers 685 species. This edition is the result of two factors: 1) the widespread acceptance and use of the first (1978), second (1982), third (1990), fourth (1997), and fifth (2002) editions, and 2) the proposed changes or additions that have appeared in print since 2002. The common names in this list are standardized, and, in general, merely repeat those that appeared in the fifth (2002) edition. We have made a few minor changes to some common names, adjustments either dictated by changes in their scientific names, to correct overlooked inconsistencies in the previous editions, or to bring a name into compliance with what we perceive is now common usage in most major publications on amphibians, turtles, reptiles, and crocodilians. The common names that appear in this edition are stable, and have been used extensively in state, regional, and national field guides on the North American herpetofauna that have been published since 1956, thus proving the utility and need for the standard common names contained herein. An important new feature of this list is the ability of its users to now track and evaluate all proposed taxonomic changes on the internet. As it did with the fourth and fifth editions, The Center for North American Herpetol- ogy, which has the largest and most comprehensive academic herpetological web site on the internet worldwide, will maintain this sixth edition online and will update it daily as changes are proposed in print. Users of this list can access the online version at http://www.cnah.org Over the past twenty years, evidence has shown that traditional recognition of the Class Reptilia is not consistent with evolutionary history. However, due to historical inertia, the herpetological community continues to be reluctant to incorporate any of these changes. We have adopted a classification based on the phylogenetic hypothesis for the Phylum Chordata displayed on the CNAH web site (Collins and Taggart, 1998–2009 et seq.), an arrangement rigorously supported by current scientific evidence using a traditional hierachy. The Class Reptilia has been traditionally composed of Order Chelonia (the turtles), Order Crocodylia (the crocodilians), Order Squamata (the lizards, snakes, and amphisbaenids), and Order Rhynchocephalia (the tuataras). The discovery that birds (Class Aves) are the closest modern relative to the 2 THe CeNTeR fOR North AmeRiCAN HeRPetolOgy crocodilians renders the former Class Reptilia as an unnatural group. in order to reconcile taxonomy with the evolutionary history revealed by molecular evidence, we have adopted the classification for North America as shown on the CNAH web site until further data suggest otherwise, as follows: Class Chelonia (turtles), Class eusuchia (crocodilians), Class Reptilia (amphis- baenians, lizards, snakes, and tuataras). Due to the arbitrary nature in which higher taxa may be delineated, we have tried to use a classification in which the maximum explanatory power is retained. We continue to urge all persons to use these standardized names—in writing, on zoo and museum exhibit labels, in proposed and enacted leg- islation, in public lectures, in media releases, and in any other manner that will stabilize, and thereby clarify, their use by the academic herpetological community and the general public. We continue to recommend that the first letter of each word in these standardized common names be capitalized, as they appear in this list. This sixth edition has been styled after the previous five editions. A com- plete and handy reference to original descriptions of most of the taxa in this list is available in Beltz (1995). Readers are also referred to the technical checklists of specific scientific names of all amphibians by frost (1985), all crocodilians and turtles by King and Burke (1989), and many (but not all) families of snakes by mcDiarmid, Campbell and Touré (1999). Since this checklist covers only the United States and Canada, readers may wish to consult frank and Ramus (1995) for common names for the rest of the world. major changes in this edition are the inclusion of complete traditional hierar- chies (with author attribution and date of first usage) as well as the adoption of higher level taxonomic names based on frost et al. (2006) for amphibian genera and families, frost and etheridge (1989) and frost et al. (2001) for lizard families, Collins (2006) for snake families, and Collins and Taggart (2008a, 2008b) for selected snake genera. Within the taxonomy presented here, Classes, Orders, families, genera, and species are in alphabetical order. The presence of a scientific name on this list indicates that it has been properly