Introduction

This introduction has been divided into four sections: (1) historical background; (2) review of the rules of list-compilation; (3) description of the process of compilation; and (4) an explanation of the format of the taxonomic accounts. To avoid any confusion when using this volume the reader is encouraged to read these introductory sections.

Historical Background

Rapid production of the CITES checklists by an international committee was impractical since committee members had other duties to perform, and no money was available to hire staff. To overcome this problem, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service volunteered to take on the task of putting together the first of the checklists. In a little over a year, Howard (Duke) Campbell and Steve Christman, National Fish and Wildlife Laboratory, Gainesville, Florida, USA, produced for CITES the first draft of a checklist, Standardized Taxonomy of Vertebrate Species. It was little more than a list of names of terrestrial vertebrate species drawn from the literature. It was estimated to be only 80 percent complete for the higher vertebrates, did not list author and date of original description, lacked references, and contained many names that were not in compliance with the ICZN. Nevertheless, it was sufficient to convince the 1979, Second Conference of the Parties to CITES, in San José, Costa Rica, that the project was worthwhile. The Parties approved the first funding for the project and solicited the Association of Systematics Collections (ASC) to undertake further development of the checklists. The ASC invited the American Society of Mammalogists to appoint a committee to oversee production of the mammal checklist, thereby assuring that the list would involve as many systematists as possible and would not reflect only the editor's opinion. Continuation of the project was endorsed and additional funding approved at the 1981 meeting (Delhi, India).

Mammal Species of the World, edited by James H. Hornacki, Kenneth E. Kinman, and James W. Koeppl, first appeared in 1982. CITES again endorsed the project and continued funding in 1983 (Gaborone, Botswana), and work was initiated on the reptile and amphibian volumes.

In 1984, an agreement was reached between the ASC and Kraig Adler, Secretary General of the World Congress of Herpetology (WCH), for the WCH to undertake editorial sponsorship of the herpetological volumes in the checklist series. Under this agreement, the WCH would appoint an international oversight committee composed of recognized systematists who would review the manuscript for each volume before it went to press. The WCH also accepted responsibility for collaborating with ASC in updating future editions. Amphibian Species of the World, edited by Darrel Frost, first appeared in 1985. At the 1985 (Buenas Aires, Argentina), and 1987 (Ottawa, Canada) Conferences of the Parties to CITES, the checklist project received renewed approbation, authorization, and appropriations.

Compilation of the Crocodilian, Tuatara, and Turtle Species of the World was begun by Darrel Frost in 1983 while he was still working on the Amphibian Species of the World. However, he had to discontinue the effort in order to concentrate on his doctoral research. John B. Iverson took up the task in 1985, only to step down later in the year. At that point a number of people were contacted by the Executive Director of ASC in an effort to find someone to complete the work. On the third round of contacts, in late 1985, the present senior editor agreed to finish compiling the checklist. The task was interrupted almost immediately when the starting date for a prior commitment was suddenly advanced and he had to leave for seven months in the field. The final push to complete the Crocodilian, Tuatara, and Turtle Species of the World was not begun in earnest until early 1987. The junior editor joined the effort about that time.

Rules of Compilation

To the best of our abilities, the nomenclature used in Crocodilian, Tuatara, and Turtle Species of the World complies with the requirements of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (Ed. 3).

Process of Compilation

It is one thing to get people to agree to serve as contributors and another to get them actually to draft sections of the checklist. All the contributors were volunteers who donated considerable time and effort to the project. All of them had other jobs which required their fulltime attention. Because of these time constraints, the editors found that contributors were more apt to respond if they were sent a preliminary draft to critique and complete than if they were asked to start with a blank piece of paper. Even when the outline was grossly incorrect most contributors would take the time to point out the mistakes and to set things right. The same is true of reviewers.

Sections of an outline checklist, prepared by the editors, was sent to the contributors for completion. In every instance, efforts were made to use as contributors the current and past revisers of the taxa in question. Taxonomic accounts in these sections were formatted to ease compilation of a computer database on the nomenclature of crocodilians, tuatara, and turtles; each contained a standard set of headings followed by blank fields to be filled out by the contributor. Completed sections were returned to the editor for inclusion in the computerized database. These completed accounts were then sent to reviewers. The reviewer's comments in turn were added to the nomenclatural database.

However, the repeated changes in editorship confused compilation of this volume. Editorial files passed from editor to editor were not complete, and as a consequence it was not always possible to determine who originally contributed a particular account. As a consequence, contributors first recruited by Darrel Frost, were re-solicited later by John Iverson, and still later by King and Burke. Most of the contributors were tolerant during the confusion, even helping to sort out commitments previously made.

As originally conceived, this checklist, like the mammal and amphibian checklists, was to be a listing of species. However, when the present editors took over the project, the Executive Director of ASC urged inclusion of subspecies, so an effort was made to find authors for the accounts. A number of people did supply subspecies accounts, but after several months the effort was abandoned when it became clear that contributors could not be found for most subspecies. Efforts then refocused on producing a species checklist that included those subspecies listed on the CITES Appendices.

Compilation continued until December 1987, so the checklist can be considered as being complete as of 1 December 1987. Only one or two later publications are included.

In mid-1988, when the manuscript was in its final stages of editing, Opinion 1463 of the ICZN was received rejecting as a non-binomial publication:

Lacépède, B.G.E. 1788. Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes Ovipaires et des Serpens. Imprimerie du Roi, Paris. Vol. 1, xvii + 651 p., 41 pls.

This ruling came too late for inclusion in this checklist. The following names attributed to Lacépède could be affected:

Trachemys terrapen
Kinosternon subrubrum
Lissemys punctata
Pelomedusa subrufa
Pelusios subniger

Organization of the Accounts

Higher Taxonomy - The higher taxonomy presented here is that used by most crocodile and turtle taxonomists. Variant opinions, or the full range of opinion, are presented in the `Comment' section.

Scientific name, authority, year of publication, and citation - The taxon name, author of the name, and the literature citation of the published description is given in each taxonomic account. The literature citation is abbreviated, indicating only the book or journal name, volume, and page on which the first nomenclaturally valid use of the name appeared. Although the ICZN recommends that commas be used between the author's name and the date of publication, commas are omitted here since there is little chance to confuse an alphabetic name with a numeric date. Many journals eliminate commas between author and date in text citations for the same reason and thus save space. The date listed is the actual date of publication. In cases where the actual date of publication differs from the printed date on the publication, the date published in the original paper appears in parentheses following the actual date. Further explanation of the publication date can be found in the bracketed comments following the complete citation in Appendix I: Literature Cited. When the author and year of publication of a species name appears in parenthesis, the species was originally described in a different genus than the one in which it presently is placed. In such cases, the original genus and the original spelling of the specific epithet appears under the heading `Original Name.' Several of the contributors pointed out that two types of literature citations are needed in checklists; abbreviated citations listing the page on which the first use of a name appeared are needed for taxonomic purposes, but complete citations with the full title and pagination are also needed by the person trying to locate the particular article in a library. Both types are presented in this checklist. The abbreviated citation appears following the scientific name, and the complete citation is listed in Appendix I: Literature Cited.

Special mention must be made of two publications, Wells and Wellington 1983, Synop. Class Rept. Australia. Australian J. Herpet. 1(3-4):73-129, and Wells and Wellington 1985, Classif. Amph. Rept. Australia. Australian J. Herpet., Suppl. Ser. 1:1-98, which have caused a lot of grief because of the wholesale nomenclatural changes in Australian taxa they contain. These authors provide little justification for most of the name changes they propose, and they are inconsistent in their application of other proposed changes as has been clearly explained in Shine 1984, Herp. Rev. 15(4):104; King and Miller 1985, Herp. Rev. 16(1):4-5; Heatwole 1985, Herp. Rev. 16(1):6; Gans 1985, Herp. Rev. 16(1):6-7; and Tyler 1985, Herp. Rev. 16(3):69. More than 150 herpetologists have indicated that they voluntarily will ignore the nomenclatural changes proposed in the two publications (see Editor's Note following Grigg and Shine 1985, Herp. Rev. 16(4):97). However salving it may be to the soul, such voluntary action cannot replace a formal decision of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) to suppress the publications. Grigg and Shine 1985, Herp. Rev. 16(4):96-97, indicate that an application is being made to the ICZN to formally suppress Wells and Wellington 1983, Synop. Class Rept. Australia. Australian J. Herpet. 1(3-4):73-129, and Wells and Wellington 1985, Classif. Amph. Rept. Australia. Australian J. Herpet., Suppl. Ser. 1:1-98. We believe the ICZN eventually will suppress these publications, but they have not done so yet, so in the interim we have attempted to follow a middle ground. We have not accepted any of the nomenclatural changes proposed by Wells and Wellington, but in the comment sections we explain what the proposed changes are and why we find them unwarranted.

Type species - The type species upon which the generic name is based appears in the generic accounts. Additional information concerning the nomenclature of the type species may also appear here.

Type specimen(s) - The identified status of primary types is listed in the species accounts. When they are known, the catalog number(s) and museum abbreviation(s) are given. Other pertinent information also may be given. The museums are identified and their addresses are listed in Appendix II: Museum Abbreviations.

Type locality - The locality at which the type specimen was collected is given in each species account under `Type Locality.' Where possible, the locality is quoted directly from the original publication, which is indicated by enclosing the locality in quotation marks. A type locality without quotation marks was taken from a secondary source or was translated from the original language. Editorial comments added for clarity are placed in brackets. Published restrictions and corrections of type localities are noted, although, apart from those associated with designation of lectotypes or neotypes, they have no status under the ICZN.

Distribution - Geographic distribution is described as accurately as possible. The distribution is not limited to published records, but is the known distribution supplied by the contributors and reviewers. See Geographic Code below.

Comments - Recent revisions, different taxonomic treatment, some synonymies, and disparate distribution records are presented without major editorial modification.

Contributors and Reviewers - Attribution is given to the people who worked on each account. They also are included in the List of Contributors and Reviewers.

Status - The crocodilian, rhynchocephalian, and turtle species included in the CITES Appendices I and II, in the Berne Convention, in the U.S. Endangered Species Act, in various other national laws, and in the Red Data Books of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) are identified. The account in the CITES Identification Manual also is cited. The CITES Appendices and the U.S. Endangered Species Act listings are current as of December 1987, and the sources of information on the other listings are cited. If status is not mentioned, the taxon is not listed as of December 1987.

Geographic Code - The individual countries and/or their subdivisions in which particular taxa occur are indicated. The codes will assist customs and wildlife inspectors responsible for enforcing CITES by identifying countries of origin from which particular taxa could be shipped in international commerce. The codes also can be used for electronic sorting of taxa by country or geographic region. The codes are drawn from the International Organization for Standardization's two-letter codes for countries, dependencies and other areas of special interest. Not all political subdivisions and dependencies are listed. For example, the Hawaiian Islands are included under the United States; the Galápagos Islands are under Ecuador; the Azores are under Portugal; and the Canary Islands are included under Spain. See Appendix III: INDEX OF GEOGRAPHIC ALPHA-2 CODES.

Common Name - An attempt was made to standardize common names. English names were drawn from Cogger 1975, Rept. amph. Australia. 660 p.; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978. Soc. Study Amph. Rept. Misc. Publ. Herpet. Circular 7, iv + 36 p.; from Iverson 1986, Checklist Turt. World. viii + 282 p.; from the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., and other standard references. Non-English names were drawn primarily from accounts in P. Dollinger (ed.) 1985, CITES Ident. Manual, Vol. 3: Rept. Amph. Pisces. Lausanne, Switzerland. Contributors and reviewers supplied names for a few new taxa and to clarify confused application of names. The list of common names is not meant to be exhaustive. Only the more frequently used names that customs inspectors might encounter on import forms are listed. For more complete listings of South American local names see Mittermeier, Medem, and Rhodin 1980, Soc. Study Amph. Rept. Herpet. Circular 9:1-44.

Illustrations - The tuatara and turtle taxa listed in the CITES Appendices are illustrated by Swiss artist, Urs Woy. The illustrations first appeared in P. Dollinger 1985, CITES Ident. Manual, Vol. 3: Rept. Amph. Pisces. Lausanne, Switzerland.