Lankascincus Megalops
''Lankascincus fallax'', also known commonly as the common supple skink and Peters's tree skink, is a species of lizard in the family Scincidae. The species is endemic to the island of Sri Lanka. Description Fronto-parietal is fused, unlike in all other Lanka skinks (where it is divided on others). Midbody scales rows 24-28. Lamellae under fourth toe are 13-18. Males are distinguish with red-throat. Dorsum pale to dark brown each dorsal scale with a pale stripe joining to form longitudinal line on dorsum. A yellowish brown stripe running from posterior edge of the eye to beyond middle of the tail. Throat color varies from red, blue or cream, with white spots, presumably depending on the reproductive status. Venter unpatterned creamy. Ventral scales with a frosted pattern, forming longitudinal lines. Iris yellow in female and bright red in males. Reproduction Lay 1 egg laid per clutch in loose soil. References Further reading * Peters W (1860). "''Mittheilung über einige ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wilhelm Peters
Wilhelm Karl Hartwich (or Hartwig) Peters (22 April 1815 in Koldenbüttel – 20 April 1883) was a German natural history, naturalist and explorer. He was assistant to the anatomist Johannes Peter Müller and later became curator of the Natural History Museum, Berlin, Berlin Zoological Museum. Encouraged by Müller and the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, Peters travelled to Mozambique via Angola in September 1842, exploring the coastal region and the Zambesi River. He returned to Berlin with an enormous collection of natural history specimens, which he then described in ''Naturwissenschaftliche Reise nach Mossambique... in den Jahren 1842 bis 1848 ausgeführt'' (1852–1882). The work was comprehensive in its coverage, dealing with mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, river fish, insects and botany. He replaced Martin Lichtenstein as curator of the museum in 1858, and in the same year he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In a few years, he g ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lizard
Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic since it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia although some lizards are more closely related to these two excluded groups than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon. Most lizards are quadrupedal, running with a strong side-to-side motion. Some lineages (known as "legless lizards"), have secondarily lost their legs, and have long snake-like bodies. Some such as the forest-dwelling ''Draco'' lizards are able to glide. They are often territorial, the males fighting off other males and signalling, often with bright colours, to attract mates and to intimidate rivals. Lizards are mainly carnivorous, often being sit-and-wait predators; many smaller species eat insects, while the Komodo eats mammals a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lankascincus
''Lankascincus'' is a genus of lizards, commonly known as lanka skinks and tree skinks, in the family Scincidae. The genus is endemic to Sri Lanka. Species The genus ''Lankascincus'' comprises nine species. *'' Lankascincus deignani'' – Deignan's tree skink *''Lankascincus dorsicatenatus'' *''Lankascincus fallax'' – Peters's tree skink *''Lankascincus gansi'' – Gans's tree skink, Gans's lankaskink *''Lankascincus merrill'' – Merrill's lanka skink *''Lankascincus sameerai'' – Sameera's lanka skink *''Lankascincus sripadensis'' – Sripada forest skink *''Lankascincus taprobanensis'' – Ceylon tree skink *''Lankascincus taylori'' – Taylor's tree skink ''Nota bene'': A binomial authority In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ... in parentheses ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Reptiles Of Sri Lanka
This is a list of reptiles of Sri Lanka. The reptilian diversity in Sri Lanka is higher than the diversity of other vertebrates such as mammals and fish with 181 reptile species. All extant reptiles are well documented through research by many local and foreign scientists and naturalists. Sri Lankan herpetologist, Anslem de Silva largely studied the biology and ecology of Sri Lanka snakes, where he documented 96 species of land and sea snakes. Five genera are endemic to Sri Lanka - ''Aspidura'', ''Balanophis'', ''Cercaspis'', ''Haplocercus'', and ''Pseudotyphlops''. Out of them only five of the land snakes are considered potentially deadly and life threatening to humans. Among snakes, 54 are endemic to Sri Lanka. The total increased to 107 with new descriptions of ''Dendrelaphis'', ''Rhinophis'', ''Aspidura'' and ''Dryocalamus''. Lizard diversity in the island has been documented and studied by many local scientists and researchers such as Imesh Nuwan Bandara, Kalana Maduwage, Anj ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ludwig Karl Schmarda
Ludwig Karl Schmarda (23 August 1819 – 7 April 1908) was an Austrians, Austrian natural science, naturalist and traveler, born at Olomouc, Olmütz, Moravia. Early life and education Schmarda was born at Olomouc, Olmütz where he attended the Grammar School and the Philosophical Course at the University of Olomouc. He graduated in 1841. He studied medicine and science at the Josephinum, now part of the Medical University of Vienna , particularly interested in zoology, graduating in 1843 as "Dr Med et Chir.", as well as Magister of Ophthalmology and Gynecology. Career In 1843 he was appointed Chief Field Physician to the dragoon regiment, a mounted infantry ("Dragonerregiment"), and at the same time acted as assistant to "special natural history" at the Josephsakademie. During two scientific journeys to the Adriatic Sea, in 1844 and 1846, he made collections of marine life. In 1848, he became a teacher of natural history and geography at the secondary school in Graz. In 1848/49 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and southeast of the Arabian Sea; it is separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. Sri Lanka shares a maritime border with India and Maldives. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is its legislative capital, and Colombo is its largest city and financial centre. Sri Lanka has a population of around 22 million (2020) and is a multinational state, home to diverse cultures, languages, and ethnicities. The Sinhalese are the majority of the nation's population. The Tamils, who are a large minority group, have also played an influential role in the island's history. Other long established groups include the Moors, the Burghers ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Endemism
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Family (biology)
Family ( la, familia, plural ') is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as the "walnut family". What belongs to a family—or if a described family should be recognized at all—are proposed and determined by practicing taxonomists. There are no hard rules for describing or recognizing a family, but in plants, they can be characterized on the basis of both vegetative and reproductive features of plant species. Taxonomists often take different positions about descriptions, and there may be no broad consensus across the scientific community for some time. The publishing of new data and opini ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nelson Annandale
Thomas Nelson Annandale CIE FRSE (15 June 1876, in Edinburgh – 10 April 1924, in Calcutta) was a British zoologist, entomologist, anthropologist, and herpetologist. He was the founding director of the Zoological Survey of India. Life The eldest son of Thomas Annandale, the regius professor of clinical surgery at the University of Edinburgh. His maternal grandfather was a publisher, William Nelson. Thomas was educated at Rugby School, Balliol College, Oxford where he studied under Ray Lankester and E. B. Tylor (doing better in anthropology than zoology), and at the University of Edinburgh where he studied anthropology, receiving a D.Sc. (1905). As a student he made visits to Iceland and the Faeroe Islands. In 1899 he travelled with Herbert C. Robinson as part of the Skeat Expedition to the northern part of the Malay Peninsula. Annandale went to India in 1904 as Deputy Superintendent under A.W. Alcock of the Natural History Section of the Indian Museum. He was a deputy dir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Common Name
In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; and is often contrasted with the scientific name for the same organism, which is Latinized. A common name is sometimes frequently used, but that is not always the case. In chemistry, IUPAC defines a common name as one that, although it unambiguously defines a chemical, does not follow the current systematic naming convention, such as acetone, systematically 2-propanone, while a vernacular name describes one used in a lab, trade or industry that does not unambiguously describe a single chemical, such as copper sulfate, which may refer to either copper(I) sulfate or copper(II) sulfate. Sometimes common names are created by authorities on one particular subject, in an attempt to make it possible for members of the general public (including such interested par ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |