Cardamom Mountains by Jeremy Holden
Cardamom Mountain Horned Agamid
Acanthosaura cardamomensis
Wood Jr., Grismer, Lee Grismer, Neang, Chav & Holden, 2010
Abstract
A new species of Acanthosaura (Gray 1831), A. cardamomensis sp. nov. from eastern Thailand and western Cambodia is described based on having a combination of unique morphological characteristics. It most closely resembles A. crucigera but differs in having significantly longer postorbital spines, occipital spines, nuchal spines, and dorsal spines; more scales between the fifth canthals; longer maximum dorsal scale length; longer maximum nuchal scale length; a significantly smaller diastema between the nuchal and dorsal crest spines; and significantly more supralabials. Mitochondrial DNA was used to calculate percent sequence divergence between samples of A. crucigera from southern Myanmar and western Thailand and samples of A. cardamomensis sp. nov. from eastern Thailand and western Cambodia. The uncorrected pairwise sequence divergence between populations of A. cardamomensis ranged from 1.2–3.1% and the range between populations of A. crucigera was 3.8%. The percent sequence divergence between A. cardamomensis sp. nov. and A. crucigera ranged between 10.0–14.6%.
Key words: Acanthosaura, armata, cardamomensis, crucigera, Cardamom Mountains
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| FIGURE 6. Morphological differentiation between adult females of (A) Acanthosaura crucigera from western Thailand and (B) Acanthosaura cardamomensis from Phnom Aural, Cambodia. |
FIGURE: Color pattern variation within Acanthosaura cardamomensis.
(upper Left) Adult female from Khao Khitchakut National Park, Chanthaburi Province, Thailand
(upper Right) Sub adult male from Phnom Dalai, Cambodia
(lower Left) Adult female from Phnom Aural, Cambodia
Wood, P.L.; Grismer, L.L.; Grismer, J.L.; Neang, T.; Chav, T. & holden, J. 2010. A new cryptic species of Acanthosaura Gray, 1831 (Squamata: Agamidae) from Thailand and Cambodia. Zootaxa. 2488: 22–38
