The West African Nile monitor (''Varanus niloticus stellatus'') is a species of monitor lizard that is native to West African forests and adjacent savannah (east to northern

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

). It has also been introduced to

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, United States, where it is considered invasive.Yong, Ed (20 April 2016)
Florida’s Dragon Problem
The Atlantic. Retrieved 15 September 2019. This

cryptic species In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

has traditionally been included in the

Nile monitor The Nile monitor (''Varanus niloticus'') is a large member of the monitor family (Varanidae) found throughout most of Sub-Saharan Africa and along the Nile, with invasive populations in North America. The population in West African forests and ...

(''V. niloticus''), but from 1997 to 2015 it was often considered as the western population of the

ornate monitor The ornate monitor (''Varanus niloticus ornatus'') is a monitor lizard that is native to West and Middle Africa. Comprehensive molecular analyses of the group have demonstrated that animals previously assigned to "''Varanus ornatus''" do not co ...

(''V. ornatus''). Compared to the other members of the Nile monitor

species complex In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

(which also includes the ornate monitor of Central Africa), the West African Nile monitor has a genetic sequence divergence of more than 8%, meaning that they separated about 7.7 million years ago. This is a larger divergence than between humans and chimpanzees. Despite this, the

Reptile Database The Reptile Database is a scientific database that collects taxonomic information on all living reptile species (i.e. no fossil species such as dinosaurs). The database focuses on species (as opposed to higher ranks such as families) and has entrie ...

continues to place it within the Nile monitor, but do note that this broad species definition includes distinctive clades.

References

Varanus Reptiles of West Africa Reptiles of Cameroon Reptiles described in 1802 Taxa named by François Marie Daudin {{Lizard-stub