Posted by:
Wulf
at Mon Aug 2 04:41:46 2004 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Wulf ]
Hello Ray,
In terms of the first, this is offensive.
Ray, you feel offended every time.
In another thread elsewhere, Richard Wells refuted the same criticism of his papers by referring the same critic to the references cited. I do the same here.
Ray, you really think that this “don’t blame me, blame the ones that I referenced…” thing justifies the errors you’ve done in your paper? It sure doesn’t!
Actually with your “Broghammerus” thing, you simly have overlooked the latest relevant work on P. reticulatus (see the citations in my first posting). One demand of scientific work is to cite every widley accepted and relevant work previously published. That’s what is the “state of the art” and from here you start to change things. Refute the recent work by providing newer facts or agree with it. Here you simply failed.
If work published is convincing, others will perhaps follow you. In this case I guess, none of the profressional herpetologists will do so.
You wrote in your paper:
Up until now, this genus has comprised just one known species, namely the Reticulated Python (Broghammerus reticulatus).
And I said that this simlpy isn’t true. That’s just fact and you feel offended :-D
There has not been a detailed analysis of scale-count variation between the regional subspecies and preliminary evidence suggests much overlap in this character between various populations.
There hasn’t been? Have a look at the paper’s from the german colleagues from the ZFMK. And if you haven’t done scale counts, it might just indicate that you not even have seen the specimens you described.
Later on in your paper you write:
Other diagnostic information for the genus Broghammerus can be readily gleaned from the literature as cited at the end of this paper, or the excellent list of sources specific for Broghammerus as cited by Uetz (2002).
Uetz (2002)? So, you’ve checked the EMBL database! By saying this, you simply have ignored the most recent work on the genus or it just wasn’t available to you. The latter would be a real pitty, because these are quite good papers :-D
You write:
McDowall (1975), pages 50-51 separated Broghammerus gen. nov. from all other Afro/Asian Pythons, which he put into the so-called "molorus group",
Well, lets see McDowell (1975:51): “All 3 New Guinea specimen of Python belong to the reticulatus Group, wich is similar in most of its feautures to the Australasian genus Liasis; also included in this group are the Malaysian P. reticulatus and Lesser Sunda P. timorensis.”
To repeat some of McDowall’s information here, this included the fact that the supralabial pits in Broghammerus gen. nov. are diagonal slits and less deeply impressed than the square pits of the more posterior infralabials; the infralabial pits are set in a distinct groove, defined ventrally by a longitudinal fold (similar to Leiopython albertisi).
McDowell (1975:50): “In the reticulatus Group, the supralabial pits are diagonal slits and less deeply impressed than the square pits of the more posteriour infralabials…”.
So this includes ALL of the species McDowell (1975) had placed into the reticulatus Group!
Broghammerus can be further separated from Python and Helionomus and Shireenhoserus gen. nov. by it’s iris colour, being red or orange, versus brownish.
As far as I remember a blood python species also has an orange iris 
Had I rehashed the detail of the references in the paper itself, I may have escaped the lack of evidence claim and instead got a plagiarisation claim instead. Put another way, I would be damned either way. Hence the original criticism by Wulf isn't valid.
Well, my original criticism about your work is that you do sloppy work (errornous authorships and dates), overlooking or even worse ignoring relevant publications and providing characters that aren’t even able to “purporte to differentiate the taxon..." (ICZN, 4th ed.).
For the plagiarisation argument, think about why McDowell didn’t change some python taxonomy, but just assumed there might be a change.
Cheers,
Wulf
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http://www.leiopython.de ,
http://www.herpers-digest.com
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