Hot on the heels of the debacle where WW claimed that Pailsus pailsi and P. rossignolli were merely underfed King Brown snakes, replete with "paper" by David Williams saying the same thing, with rubbery figures, I have now been advised of yet another hatchet job in the offing where WW et. al. seek to publish a paper on Acanthophis claiming all taxa named by Hoser in 1998 and 2002 to be mere variants of earlier described taxa.
This is curious as in an earlier paper by Fry, Wuster and others, they published venom data supporting and confirming the Hoser 1998 taxonomy, complete with diagram in support of the Hoser position.
WW et. al. are now ignoring their own data with a paper leaked to me with some bizarre claims and conclusions, including (I understand) new bizarre claims that A. woolfi from Mount Isa Queensland is the same taxa as A. rugosa from Irian Jaya, and that A. cummingi from the top-end is the same as A. woolfi and that A. bottomi/lancasteri is also A. rugosa.
Strange but true!
This makes about as much sense as BGF's misdiagnosis of A. woolfi as merely a variant of A. praelongus.
As I stare at an A. woolfi sitting in a cage next to this computer, I only wonder at this latest attempt to create more confusion in Acanthophis taxonomy after I spent so many years trying to fix it all up.
Perhaps WW and/or BGF may like to substantiate the basis of these radical claims on this list, particularly as it is evident that their latest "paper" was shopped to a journal and a naive editor before the recognised experts on Acanthophis were even given a chance to comment.CHEERS
Adder Taxonomy

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