Carpenter's Chameleon, Kinyongia carpenteri (Parker, 1929) is a species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 with a distribution limited to the mountain highlands on the border between Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

 and the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

. The species name honors the type specimen's collector, Dr. G. D. Hale Carpenter

Geoffrey Douglas Hale Carpenter

G.D. Hale Carpenter MBE MA DM FRS was a British entomologist and physician. He worked first at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and in Uganda, on tse-tse flies and sleeping sickness...

. Originally named in the genus Chamaeleo

Chamaeleo

Chamaeleo is a genus of chameleons found primarily in the mainland of sub-saharan Africa, but a few species are also present in northern Africa, southern Europe and southern Asia east to India and Sri Lanka. They are slow moving with independently movable eyes, the ability to change skin...

, the species was moved into the genus Bradypodion

Bradypodion

Bradypodion is one of six genera of chameleons within the "true" or "typical" chameleons . They are native to southern Africa, and are sometimes collectively called South African dwarf chameleons...

prior to its current classification. With the move into the genus Kinyongia

Kinyongia

Kinyongia is a chameleon genus that recently was established for several plesiomorphic species found in forest and woodland in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and far eastern DR Congo. All except K. adolfifriderici and K. tavetana are restricted to highlands and many have very small distributions....

, the masculine ending to the specific epithet of this species and others in the genus need to be modified to match the feminine

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

genus name.