Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles

Main project pageTalkParticipantsReferences and templatesTree of Life Newsletter

Discussion at Talk:Skink § Requested move 27 August 2025

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Skink § Requested move 27 August 2025. Jako96 (talk) 07:57, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria for List of organisms of Place

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Inclusion criteria for List of organisms of Place about what should be included in such lists. Please contribute there. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:43, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Poison dart frog

Poison dart frog has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 19:10, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

New discoveries in Cambodian karst ecosystems

Looks like there were several new reptiles discovered in recent reports out of Cambodia. Linking to the page on this site where you can most easily see the newly discovered species, but there's a host of pages on this site as well as a link to download the official Report. It seems not all the new species have been fully described yet. https://www.fauna-flora.org/explained/discoveries-in-the-dark-cambodias-karst-caves/ Ggoatcheese (talk) 16:13, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Species redirect going to wrong species

Hi folks, I'm much more well-acquainted with the bird side of Wikipedia, and wasn't sure what best procedure would be for this issue, so wanted to ask here.

Currently, Gekko aaronbaueri is redirecting, as you can see from the link, to Hemidactylus aaronbaueri. However, the former is not a synonym of the latter. Here is G. aaronbaueri's separate IUCN assessment, and here is H. aaronbaueri's. Here is the paper describing G. aaronbaueri from 2015 – it lives in Laos, whereas H. aaronbaueri lives in India.

I've not moved any redirects before, and didn't feel comfortable messing around with it too much, but wanted to make someone aware. DuckWrangler97 (talk) 16:11, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Hold on -- just figured out the problem -- wrong binomial name was on Aaron Bauer's gecko. I'll fix that and undo my edits. DuckWrangler97 (talk) 16:13, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

I think I've now removed all H. aaronbaueri related information from G. aaronbaueri's page, but someone more familiar with geckos may want to check my work. DuckWrangler97 (talk) 16:59, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Notability of these three monitors?

I created drafts for three new species of Varanus (Draft:Orange-headed rock monitor, Draft:Yellow-headed rock monitor, and Draft:Rainbow rock monitor) using their proposed common names. However, I left the drafts unpublished while awaiting their addition to databases like ITIS or the IUCN (or at least more literature than the announcements of their discovery), to make sure the pages complied with WP:SPECIES.

However, User:Bhinkins recently created articles under the lizards' scientific names (Varanus umbra, Varanus phosphoros, Varanus iridis). They suggested I merge the drafts into their articles and did not explain their notability (all versions use almost identical sources).

Anyways, my main question for here is, do these lizards currently meet the notability guidelines? I am not familiar with Wikipedia but that does not seem to be the case.

Thanks for the help! Stormdew (talk) 22:18, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

All extant species of eukaryotes are considered notable. See Wikipedia:NSPECIES for the guideline on this. However, make sure that major taxonomic authorities agree on the species status, or note any disagreements when making new pages. I'm not sure how much of any issue this is in the herpetofauna, but it birds it can be a very confusing issue. DuckWrangler97 (talk) 22:55, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, the problem is none of the major authorities have any information on these species yet. They were described only weeks ago. Are names still presumed valid with no secondary verification?Stormdew (talk) 23:30, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

I would really prefer that folks hold off on creating articles for newly described species until secondary taxonomic sources show that somebody other than the people who described it accepts the species. And in my interpretation, that is the whole reason that NSPECIES has the word "accepted". However, throughout Wikipedia's history, people have been creating articles for newly described species that get covered in the news. News coverage is secondary (although news coverage is almost always derived from press releases from an institution affiliated with one of the describers (this appears to be the case with the monitor drafts; the phys.org article say it was "provided by the Australian National University)).

I don't know that there is really any way to get people to stop creating articles for newly described species that have some news coverage. In some cases, those articles may be pretty appropriate and of high interest to readers; e.g., a new fossil hominin species. It's a tricky needle to thread; I'm concerned about systematic bias in coverage of organisms, and I don't think herps (or plants, etc.) should be held to a stricter standard than fossil hominins, but I do recognize that fossil hominins will attract more attention. Plantdrew (talk) 00:54, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

@Stormdew: the names don't require any secondary verification showing that the taxa are accepted – new names may be treated by others as synonyms. I agree with Plantdrew above that we should not be creating articles for newly described taxa based on news coverage of releases by non-independent sources, such as the authors' institution. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:51, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Usually potential splits can be covered on an existing species page, but this paper states the new species were from previously unconfirmed and unresearched populations that when studied didn't match any existing species. There is Varanus (Odatria), which could use further updates. Unfortunately the paper's new phylogeny covers only the Australian species. CMD (talk) 11:08, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

I agree that it is premature for these articles to exist. They need independent acceptance. Assuming their analyses are technically correct, their forming a distinct clade with divergence comparable to other related species suggests that acceptance is likely. I'd expect them to be recognised in the next Reptile Database update (May or June), so draft articles are appropriate. Zozaya et al (2026) also include Varanus kuranda in their study, which is recognised as a species in Pavón-Vázquez et al (2026 doi:10.1093/sysbio/syaf064), reluctantly accepting a Wells and Wellington epithet.  —  Jts1882 | talk  17:23, 24 April 2026 (UTC)