Morph or Phase?

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-Katana-

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When describing a different color variation in Australian lizards, monitors, skinks and dragons is it correct to call them phases or morphs like they do with snakes.

Trying to get the terminology correct is always a rather tricky part of entering into a new fancy.

Thanks,
~Akwendi.
 
I think it's phases for lizards,i know what you mean tho.getting the lingo right so you don't look like a complete noobie to everyone is really really hard.i read lots....practice.......and still get it wrong.hahahahahaha
 
Akwendi, the term "morph" has been used in herpetoculture to describe a designer morph or snakes bred purposely (or accidentally) for certain traits. Dictionary of Biological Terms says: morph - is one of the morphs in a polymorphic population. That means - morphs occur naturally in the wild. Zoologists use the term to describe an animal that looks different to the rest within a population. However, it is essential to add what kind of morph, not just "a morph". For example: grey morphs of a RBBS or miniature morph of bearded dragon, etc.. Morphology is a structure (shape, colour, size, etc.) of a organism as opposed to physiology. Phase has the same meaning as morph - it refers to the external appearance of the organism.
I hope it helps.
 
Thank you, WR..it did help to a certain degree, but as usual it opens up a whole new range of questions.
 
Well....what is a phase?
Is it a morph..(as in a color morph rather than a structural morph) and is it only applicable to lizards, monitors, dragons and skinks?
 
Both terms; morph and phase are applicable to any living organism. It applies to any aspect of the animal's external appearance, e.g. colour, shape, texture, etc.. Hypothetically, you can have yellow morph blue-tongue lizard or fat morph, spiny morph, deformed, glossy, big, small ........ they can all be described as morphs because we know what the "norm" blue-tongue looks like and these morphs are different. The term "phase" is usually used to describe a population displaying different but uniform features, common in polymorphic populations. e.g. blue phase common tree snake. Makes sense?
 
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Once again, WR..thank you for taking the time with an excellent explanation.
It will go a long way towards helping me use both terms in their correct context.

Cheers.
 
Just to add to what WR has already said: In general, although morph and phase can technically usually be interchanged, in general usage these days 'morph' usually applies to a cultured (ie man-influenced) mutation and 'phase' usually applies to a naturally occurring variation. For example, although you may find the odd albino python in the wild, we'd be more likely to refer to an albino Darwin carpet as an albino morph rather than albino phase. Where it gets confusing is when you have true polymorphic species. Polymorphic simply means that the animal naturally comes in a variety of types (usually different colour patterns) that aren't necessarily geographical variants. Although the word 'morph' appears in polymorphic, you'll rarely hear of these naturally occurring variations being referred to as morphs these days, but rather 'phases'. Lace monitors are a good example of an Australian polymorphic species - you'll find mixed populations of both 'normal' and broad banded lace monitors, fully interbreeding, in the wild. The broad banded ones are generally referred to as 'Bell's phase' rather than 'Bell's morph'. However, if some reptile keeper got ahold of a lace monitor that had an all-yellow mutation and line bred it, the offspring would likely be referred to as 'lutino morph', 'canary morph' or something like that, rather than yellow phase.
 
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