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THE FUNCTION OF SQUAMATE EPIDERMATOGLYPHICS (1959 words) |
 | Abstract: Squamate epidermatoglyphics are proposed to function as an aid in capture, dispersal and retention of pheromones. |
| Sight, hearing, tactile and taste senses are developed in squamates to different degrees in different taxa, and in given groups one or more may be very acute, but no sensory system is so well developed across the board in squamates as the vomeronasal olfactory system, activated primarily by the tongue. |
| Yet squamatans (individual squamate reptiles, as opposed to collective groups) are exceptionally impoverished in glandular sources for pheromones, since they lack the generally distributed skin glands so characteristic of fishes, amphibians and mammals. |
| Kearney Lab Researchers (677 words) |
| Amphisbaenians are a poorly known group of fossorial squamate reptiles, nearly all of which are limbless, and many of which exhibit dramatic modifications of the cranium related to their highly derived, head-first burrowing behavior. |
| Two main hypotheses are at the heart of current debate on snake origins: a marine origin of snakes from the extinct, aquatic mosasaurs or a burrowing/terrestrial origin of snakes from fossorial or terrestrial lizards such as the burrowing dibamids or amphisbaenians, or the terrestrial monitor lizards. |
| Squamates are the subject of many phylogeny-based research programs in ecology and evolution, yet the relationships among major lineages of squamates remain remarkably uncertain. |
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