>>I've seen some discussion amongst those who have bought the new Campbell and Lamar (I have not, as I have the original and don't need a new set of coffee table books).

>>

>> Several people have emailed me mentioning that C&L (2003) mentions the NW South American bushmasters as Lachesis acrochordus......Does it cite a paper? To my knowledge, the only designation of this species has been in the 2002 Revision of Dean Ripa's Bushmaster book. Do C&L actually credit Ripa with this?



The name Lachesis acrochorda dates back to Garcia (1896). Campbell & Lamar cite Ripa as the justification for regarding the Choco bushmaster as a separate species, and use the oldest available name for it. Not much of a problem there.



>>Also, what's the status of Central American C. durissus? To my knowledge WW was doing work on this, yet his study is not finished yet. What paper is cited as the reason to rename Central American durissus(is it C. simus?)???



This is not based on any particular paper. Basically, Campbell & Lamar did the following:



(i) they split durissus into 3 species, C. totonacus, the remaining C. American populations, and the South American species



(ii) they rejected Smith & Taylor's (1950) fixation of the type locality of durissus to Jalapa, Veracruz, Meciso, and instead used historical evidence to surmise that Linnaeus's type came from the Guyanas, so that the name durissus "belongs" to the South American populations and to the Guyanan ones specifically. Thus, Crotalus durissus dryinas becomes Crotalus durissus durissus.



(iii) they identified the name Crotalus simus Latreille 1801 as the odlest available anme for any of the C. American populations. Consequently, what was C. durissus durissus becomes C. simus simus, and tzabcan and culminatus also become ssp. of C. simus.



The problem with all this is that the types for these old names are no longer traceable, the descriptions are minimal (as was customary in those days), and there is no accurate type locality info, which makes assigning all these old anmes floating around the literature to any particular taxon a difficult undertaking. The problem is simply that the entire nomenclature of the C. durissus complex is a total clusterf@ck.



Our study should be written up later this year. Don't get too used to the new nomenclature, it ain't gonna stay stable for too long.



Cheers,



Wolfgang
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