Iguanidae

Iguanidae is a family of lizards composed of iguanas and related species.

Classification

Several classification schemes have been used to define the structure of this family. The "historical" classification recognized all New World iguanians, plus Brachylophus and the Madagascar oplurines, as informal groups and not as formal subfamilies.

Frost and Etheridge (1989) formally recognized these informal groupings as families. This view is not generally accepted.

Macey et al., (1997) in their analysis of molecular data for iguanian lizards recovered a monophyletic Iguanidae and formally recognized the eight families proposed by Frost and Etheridge (1989) as subfamilies of Iguanidae.

Schulte et al., (2003) reanalyzed the morphological data of Frost and Etheridge in combination with molecular data for all major groups of Iguanidae and recovered a monophyletic Iguanidae, but the subfamilies Polychrotinae and Tropidurinae were not monophyletic. The phylogenetic classification of Iguania from this work is the current and most generally accepted classification of iguanid lizards.