Some C.bourreti pics,

Status
Not open for further replies.

Benjamin

Active Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2011
Messages
773
Location (City and/or State)
zone 7b
thankgiving2012pluslotsaturtles223.jpg

fallhalloweenetal128.jpg

bourreti2012007.jpg

These are some older pictures I never posted.
Enjoy,
 

Moozillion

Well-Known Member
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Apr 26, 2012
Messages
10,744
Location (City and/or State)
Louisiana, USA
Beautiful! What does the "C." stand for? What is their common name?
 

RedfootsRule

New Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2012
Messages
938
Location (City and/or State)
Miami, Florida
Curoa? Or do you consider it Cistoclemmys? I can't believe you have flower backs...I didn't even know they were bred in captivity. How many hatchlings have you produced? Can I get in line for a hatchling, or are they all going to assurance colonys? :)
 

theTurtleRoom

Active Member
10 Year Member!
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Nov 5, 2012
Messages
410
Location (City and/or State)
Lititz, PA
Ben - great pictures! So good to see these!

For those who asked...

Cuora is the accepted genus these days. I believe their english common name is "Flowerback Box Turtle".
 

RedfootsRule

New Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2012
Messages
938
Location (City and/or State)
Miami, Florida
theTurtleRoom said:
Ben - great pictures! So good to see these!

For those who asked...

Cuora is the accepted genus these days. I believe their english common name is "Flowerback Box Turtle".

They were re-assigned to their own "cistoclemmys" because they were considered to terrestrial for a box turtle. Atleast thats what I heard, but maybe its not all-around accepted.
 

theTurtleRoom

Active Member
10 Year Member!
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Nov 5, 2012
Messages
410
Location (City and/or State)
Lititz, PA
RedfootsRule said:
theTurtleRoom said:
Ben - great pictures! So good to see these!

For those who asked...

Cuora is the accepted genus these days. I believe their english common name is "Flowerback Box Turtle".

They were re-assigned to their own "cistoclemmys" because they were considered to terrestrial for a box turtle. Atleast thats what I heard, but maybe its not all-around accepted.

They had been Cistoclemmys for a time, but most sources place them back in Cuora. (And to place them in another genus would have nothing to do with being "more terrestrial"; morphology and DNA studies would be the reason, and are the reason for this thought). For the first 10 years or so after they were discovered, they did not even hold full species rank, but rather, were subspecies of galbinifrons.

The group of turtles that have been occasionally placed in Cistoclemmys are placed that way by those who want to separate the monophyletic clusters each into their own genus. However, there is still a lot of DNA work to be done to determine some of the ancestry of these turtles, and while the DNA may show this group to be monophyletic, if there is still a surviving ancestor, you wouldn't separate them from their ancestor. (An example of this would be the group of 5 broad-head maps. Together, these 5 species form a monophyletic cluster within the Graptemys genus, but Graptemys geographica is their ancestor. So, even though they are monophyletic, there is no reason they should be pulled out of the Graptemys genus.)

Below, I'm linking to what I consider the best, full look at Chelonian taxonomy. There are always disagreements, but its the best list to use as a "bible". They release an update each year on Dec. 31st. I think Cuora begins on page 000.268ish...

http://www.iucn-tftsg.org/wp-content/uploads/file/Accounts/crm_5_000_checklist_v5_2012.pdf

In general, there is a lot of uncertainty in many of the Asian genera. Lots of work is being done, and I would not be surprised to see a number of changes again within the next few years.

One of the options, instead of having 4 genera for the clades of Cuora would be to use a sub-genus (or 4) as is used in the Chelodina genus.
 

RedfootsRule

New Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2012
Messages
938
Location (City and/or State)
Miami, Florida
Many sources still place them as galbinofrons, it seems. I don't think any species will ever be fully accepted. When did carbonaria go from geochelone to chelonidis? Yet many still list it as geochelone...Same with leopards....All starts with that one biologist that wants to name it his own :).
 

theTurtleRoom

Active Member
10 Year Member!
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Nov 5, 2012
Messages
410
Location (City and/or State)
Lititz, PA
RedfootsRule said:
Many sources still place them as galbinofrons, it seems. I don't think any species will ever be fully accepted. When did carbonaria go from geochelone to chelonidis? Yet many still list it as geochelone...Same with leopards....All starts with that one biologist that wants to name it his own :).

Haha, not quite. Sometimes for things being names as species instead of subspecies, that is the case.

However, genus names are more related to how things fit together in relation to one another. bourreti have been accepted as full species status by most people since 2009, and some as early as 2004, when the first suggestion of them being full species was shown in research. A lot of these changes have to do with DNA.

The former Geochelone species you mention have been chagned because of the genetic work done showing how distant the relations are between the star species (elegans and platynota) and the species you mention. Hence, the change in genus for many of those animals. This change has been widely recognized since at least 2007, if not earlier. In the hobby, a lot of stuff gets called by old names for longer periods of time than in the academic realm, mainly because most people don't keep up with it; this can be for various reasons from time to lack-of-accessibility.
 

RedfootsRule

New Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2012
Messages
938
Location (City and/or State)
Miami, Florida
theTurtleRoom said:
RedfootsRule said:
Many sources still place them as galbinofrons, it seems. I don't think any species will ever be fully accepted. When did carbonaria go from geochelone to chelonidis? Yet many still list it as geochelone...Same with leopards....All starts with that one biologist that wants to name it his own :).

Haha, not quite. Sometimes for things being names as species instead of subspecies, that is the case.

However, genus names are more related to how things fit together in relation to one another. bourreti have been accepted as full species status by most people since 2009, and some as early as 2004, when the first suggestion of them being full species was shown in research. A lot of these changes have to do with DNA.

The former Geochelone species you mention have been chagned because of the genetic work done showing how distant the relations are between the star species (elegans and platynota) and the species you mention. Hence, the change in genus for many of those animals. This change has been widely recognized since at least 2007, if not earlier. In the hobby, a lot of stuff gets called by old names for longer periods of time than in the academic realm, mainly because most people don't keep up with it; this can be for various reasons from time to lack-of-accessibility.

Haha, I know, it just seems like everyone recognizes it as something different. To often it gets changed, and we're all on a different track...Geochelone pardalis or stigmochelys? I still don't understand that one =/.
 

theTurtleRoom

Active Member
10 Year Member!
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Nov 5, 2012
Messages
410
Location (City and/or State)
Lititz, PA
RedfootsRule said:
Haha, I know, it just seems like everyone recognizes it as something different. To often it gets changed, and we're all on a different track...Geochelone pardalis or stigmochelys? I still don't understand that one =/.

Well, again, it was discovered to be not closely related to elegans and platynota, so it was placed in a new genus, Stigmochelys. DNA work was pretty much done on the whole Geochelone genus at once, so when it was broken up, a number of genera were formed, inluding: Astrochelys, Chelonoidis, Stigmochelys. It is most accepted as Stigmochelys pardalis these days.
 

RedfootsRule

New Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2012
Messages
938
Location (City and/or State)
Miami, Florida
Astrochelys was once geochelone? I've never heard it called anything else other then astrochelys....
 

tortadise

Well-Known Member
Moderator
10 Year Member!
Joined
Mar 2, 2012
Messages
9,560
Location (City and/or State)
Tropical South Texas
Fantastic work with this remarkable species. They sure do need it in the conservation realm.
 

theTurtleRoom

Active Member
10 Year Member!
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Nov 5, 2012
Messages
410
Location (City and/or State)
Lititz, PA
RedfootsRule said:
Astrochelys was once geochelone? I've never heard it called anything else other then astrochelys....

Yes, my mistake...that should be Centrochelys. However, Astrochelys radiata was once listed under Geochelone
 

Benjamin

Active Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2011
Messages
773
Location (City and/or State)
zone 7b
Thanks for the compliments and good conversation. I was not aware that they had been moved back to cistoclemmys. I had always prefered to call them cuora anyhow.
Are there any new publishings regarding C.serrata?
They are very interesting turtles to take care of. Husbandry is very similar to the american box turtles. They make some cool noise too. They make a clicking sound while breathing when curious of activity in the greenhouse. They don't like being handled and the males will run away when I approach them.
My dream is someday to hatch all three species of the flowerback box turtle. I got eggs from the picturata this past year, but none from the galbinifrons. They are perhaps still too small.
 

theTurtleRoom

Active Member
10 Year Member!
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Nov 5, 2012
Messages
410
Location (City and/or State)
Lititz, PA
Ben...last I've seen serrata are still considered a hybrid.

And, bourreti are still considered Cuora by most. The Cistoclemmys thing only lasted a short while, I think.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top