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Batagur affinis

Batagur affinis


Useful links and literature:
The Reptile Database: Batagur affinis

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Malaysia's Tuntung

Baska: Bewitched by Batagur The Malay peninsula plus Sarawak on Borneo are the home to two species of Batagur: B. affinis (both subspecies: B. a. affinis and B. a. edwardmolli ) and B. borneoensis ( Iverson, 1992 ). These two species coexist in some rivers while vast differences in mating and nesting isolate the species from interbreeding. They have both been reported as existing with Sonneratia  spp of Mangrove Apple trees ( Guntoro, 2012a , Holloway, 2003 ), the fruit of which was long-thought to be a staple of the species. The Malay names for Batagur species is "Tuntung," an onomatopoeic name that either reflects the drumming sound produced by females as they drop their plastron onto the sand to disguise their nest after depositing the eggs (Moll, 1978) or the sound of the eggs exiting the cloaca and dropping onto the other eggs ( Guntoro, 2012 b). Use of this as a name reflects the most visible time for the species as they historically nested communally, sometime...
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Baska: bewitched by Batagur

In his fifty years at the British Museum of Natural History , John Edward Gray described 306 reptile  species (1)(Uetz, 2010). It would appear that he was a classic “splitter”;  naming one species under several names. One group that benefitted from Gray’s nomenclatural creativity is the genus of six species of large river turtles, Batagur. When he named the genus, he gave no etymology and none has since been deduced, leaving the word without meaning other than being a genus of turtles. This genus has been at the heart of scientific exploration of the 19th century and has seen the struggles of European colonisation of Asia. Members of the genus have been revered as the property of Royalty and most populations have been decimated through their harvest of adults and eggs. Batagur contains five of the twenty-five most endangered species in the world (TCC, 2011). Consequently,  Batagur  turtles have been the subject of innovative conservation breeding efforts, taxo...
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Batagur Origins

Batagur Origins: where did turtles of the genus Batagur originally evolve and how do we know?   Prologue A large river turtle powers its way smoothly against the current of a voluminous river. The temperate climate of its surrounds provide it a rich bounty that make its ability to swim in strong currents pay off. Its river is changing, slowly but surely, as the Indian subcontinent contacts and begins to push against the Eurasian continent. Rivers change course and a section that was previously near the coast is now far inland. Having evolved to deal with river mouth tides and strong currents, our turtle is now in a deep, upriver section. The environment is warm and forests abound. So may have been the evolution of the shared ancestor of the large river turtles of the genera Batagur and Hardella.  Today these genera exist, from India, eastward through Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam; and south through Malaysia and Indonesia, to Borneo. They are strong swim...
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