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Blue poison dart frog. Herpetology (from Greek ἑρπετόν herpetón, meaning "reptile" or "creeping animal") is a branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, salamanders, and caecilians (Gymnophiona)) and reptiles (including snakes, lizards, turtles, crocodilians, and tuataras).
The decline in amphibian and reptile populations has led to an awareness of the effects of pesticides on reptiles and amphibians. [177] In the past, the argument that amphibians or reptiles were more susceptible to any chemical contamination than any land aquatic vertebrate was not supported by research until recently. [ 177 ]
Reptiles, from Nouveau Larousse Illustré, 1897–1904, notice the inclusion of amphibians (below the crocodiles). In the 13th century, the category of reptile was recognized in Europe as consisting of a miscellany of egg-laying creatures, including "snakes, various fantastic monsters, lizards, assorted amphibians, and worms", as recorded by Beauvais in his Mirror of Nature. [7]
While reptiles and amphibians can be quite similar externally, the French zoologist Pierre André Latreille recognized the large physiological differences at the beginning of the 19th century and split the herptiles into two classes, giving the four familiar classes of tetrapods: amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. [30]
Reptiles are tetrapod animals in the class Reptilia, comprising today's turtles, crocodilians, snakes, amphisbaenians, lizards, tuatara, and their extinct relatives. The study of these traditional reptile orders , historically combined with that of modern amphibians , is called herpetology .
Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species, [1] ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains.
Amphisbaenia / æ m f ɪ s ˈ b iː n i ə / (called amphisbaenians or worm lizards) is a group of typically legless lizards, [2] comprising over 200 extant species. Amphisbaenians are characterized by their long bodies, the reduction or loss of the limbs, and rudimentary eyes.
Sauropsida (Greek for "lizard faces") is a clade of amniotes, broadly equivalent to the class Reptilia, though typically used in a broader sense to also include extinct stem-group relatives of modern reptiles and birds (which, as theropod dinosaurs, are nested within reptiles as more closely related to crocodilians than to lizards or turtles). [2]