First, the things we/humans, name animals, is to make it handy for us. It many cases, its not about the animals.

In the case of kennerlyi, not exactly sure why they made them separate species. In fact, goggle up the paper, the paper calls them semi species. Which is something I never heard of.

The paper that seperates them, does so with morphology, which is physical differences. In this case, it came down to two different type of head scales, azygous and loreals. It turned out, one was clinal, which means it had a constant change from north to south. The other, didn't, but a certain percentage was in the overlap zone, like 20%

Which means to me, this was a horrible reason to make them separate species, not only is it not accurate, but they, as you mention, express an area in intermediate characters. So basically, most northern hogs, have more azygous then kennerlyi. But some don't.

The truth is, naming species based on morphology is a thing of the past. Currently MTdna is the popular choice. Which as soon as someone gets the time to rework hogs, will change the entire landscape. While Dna does not care what the morphology is, the animals could be physically identical, genetics is a accurate measurable test. The problem is, its kinda useless to the casual user(us)
hogs were a perfect group for naming by morphology and using subspecies(like it was) They have a huge range and which include some very slight physical differences. But are indeed the same snake.
I do not like the term intergrade, as it indicates one pure species, breeding with another species, and resulting in animals that are part way one or the other. Intermediate, simply indicates individuals with morphology between the arbitrary differences we named them for. With Dna, that will not occur, as it does not matter what they physically look like. The will be what their barcode says they are. even if that too is arbitrary.

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Hide Replies ]