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Banded Tree Monitor
''Varanus scalaris'' is a small species of monitor lizard. It is often referred to as the banded tree monitor or the spotted tree monitor. It is found in Australia in the states of Western Australia and Queensland as well as the Northern Territory, the province of Papua, Indonesia and in Papua New Guinea. The species inhabits trees in the savanna woodlands and forages for food in both trees and on the ground, with a diet consisting of insects as well as small vertebrates. Venom Like all other monitor lizards, banded tree monitors possess venom glands in their lower jaws, giving them a noticeably venomous bite. The venom is an anticoagulant, and has two known mechanisms for disrupting blood clotting: by fibrinogenolysis (the destructive cleavage of fibrinogen) and by blocking platelet aggregation. The venom also causes hypotension. Monitor lizard venom is extremely complex and diverse due to the great range of ecological niches that they occupy. Banded tree monitors have the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Mertens
Robert Friedrich Wilhelm Mertens (1 December 1894 – 23 August 1975) was a German herpetologist. Several taxa of reptiles are named after him.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii. ("Mertens", p. 176; "Robert", p. 223; "Robert Mertens", p. 223). He postulated Mertensian mimicry. Mertens was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He moved to Germany in 1912, where he earned a doctorate in zoology from the University of Leipzig in 1915. During World War I, he served in the German army. Mertens worked at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt for many years, beginning as an assistant in 1919, and retiring as director emeritus in 1960. He also became a lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1932, and became a Professor there in 1939. Both jobs provided him with ample time for extensive travel and the study of lizards. He collected specimens in 30 countries. During World War II, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Varanus (Hapturosaurus)
''Hapturosaurus,'' sometimes known as the tree monitors, is a subgenus of lizards, consisting of slender-bodied Arboreal locomotion, arboreal monitor lizards mostly found in the tropical rainforests of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Taxonomy The type species is the Emerald tree monitor, green tree monitor, originally designated by Hermann Schlegel in 1844 as ''Monitor prasinus''. Robert Mertens placed tree monitors within the subgenus ''Varanus (Odatria), Odatria'' in 1942. In 1988, tree monitors were instead placed within ''Euprepriosaurus'' alongside the mangrove monitors. Nevertheless, there was a distinction between mangrove and tree monitors that was clear even then, so ''Euprepriosaurus'' was commonly considered to consist of two species complexes, i.e., the ''Mangrove monitor, V. indicus'' complex and the ''Emerald tree monitor, V. prasinus'' complex. In 2016, Yannick Bucklitsch, Wolfgang Böhme, and André Koch found the two species complexes sufficiently morphologicall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
