Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just got my Venomous Reptiles of the Western Hemisphere. To me, it appears that viridis and durissus were completely reorganized. not to mention totonacus and simus? were all of these new developments that i just didn't hear about, or are the authors capable and authorized of reorganization, or is it something else? Sorry, I was just a little confused. Chris

Yup,

We've gotta learn those latin names all over again! The authors (and contributors) are all well-qualified. With DNA, fossil records, more intense review of bio-geography etc, etc. everything is getting a "makeover". Note, (concerning non-venomous) the "pitophis" complex, for example, has also been renamed in part. I also heard that the "lepidus" complex may be redone, which means you'll have to have locality specifics to know which animals you have in your collection.

So, have a good read!!!

Personally I think it is a dastardly plot to make my entire reptile library obsolete!!!!!!!!!!

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

lol , I just ordered that book , should have it in a few days . Reorganization...I don't know if I have it in me to learn more Latin lol
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1.0 gaboon viper
1.1. Red tail boa
0.1 FWC
1.0 western coral snake

Good luck getting it in a few days, I ordered mine in November and just got it less than 2 weeks ago. chris

hi,

the viridis and durissus complexes (or clusterfxxxx) have been receiving a lot of attention lately, particularly the former. take a look at the systematic history of each taxon, given in each taxon's account in vrna.

keep in mind, vrna isn't primary literature, it's a (masterful) review and collection piece. if you want to stay current, read primary lit, or you'll always be behind (or rather, just more behind). taxonomic dynamism is a fact of life, get used to it.

systematics is funny, but really just like science in general. anybody can take a shot at reorganizing something, and then take a shot at getting it published. shop around for a journal that'll take it, even (there are strata in the journal world - top tier to bottom feeders - getting published in, say, texas journal of science isn't as desirable as getting published in, say, ecology). then it has to be accepted into common usage, which means people qualified to judge the work (peers) have to buy it. campbell & lamar didn't make stuff up (except when one or the other were the ones who actually described the new taxa, like bothriechis thalassinus), they paid attention to the primary literature (e.g. herp review, j herp, etc), and compiled it all for us non-systematists.

speaking of common usage, are you calling cornsnakes pantherophis yet??? another example i like: harris and simmons' 1976 crotalus paper. total piece of crap, but it got published (a good lesson - read critically, you may know more than the editors of a particular journal do, on your particular specialty). but their naming of c.w.obscurus actually stuck, not for their techniques (roundly pilloried, just blasted), but because other researchers later came along, recognized a valid taxon based on their own work, and had to live with "obscurus" because it had precedence (first name sticks is the "rule" in nomenclature).

for kicks, see the viridis treatment by douglas et al in "biology of the vipers" for a more liberal parsing of the complex - lots of ssp got elevated to species. (nice pics too.) don't know precisely why campbell & lamar didn't take it, the methods seem valid (but i'm not a systematist or geneticist, unlike douglas et al). think they used both maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood approaches.

cheers,
jimi gragg

Hi,

>>for kicks, see the viridis treatment by douglas et al in "biology of the vipers" for a more liberal parsing of the complex - lots of ssp got elevated to species. (nice pics too.) don't know precisely why campbell & lamar didn't take it, the methods seem valid (but i'm not a systematist or geneticist, unlike douglas et al). think they used both maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood approaches.

I don't think many would argue with the methods of Douglas et al., but some might argue with the itnerpretation of the results. Mitochondrial DNA is not the whole story, just part of it. What it can't do is demonstrate genetic breaks between adjoining populations, because it only reflects female gene flow. You can have different mtDNA lineages present within a single organismal lineage, or, at the very least, you can have clinal variation and extensive gene flow between two "forms" that carry different mtDNA lineages. You will never know, irrespective of how amny mtDNA sequences you have or how you analyse them.

Cheers,

Wolfgang
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hi wolfgang,

i just scanned your 2000 pook et al paper - thanks for the links. can't compare it physically w/ douglas et al, as the latter's in a box in another state (i'm mid-move, in a protracted way). or particularly intelligently, as i'm a population biologist, certainly no phylogeneticist (never had a single genetics class, even, to my shame). but from longer-term memory, it seems the 2 papers' interpretations are pretty congruent. e.g., a clearly basal cerberus, a principal east-west split in the whole viridis complex, nuntius sunk into a super-paraphyletic viridis, oreganus kind of messy too, caliginus sunk into a less-paraphyletic helleri, abyssus/lutosus pretty darn close, within a paraphyletic lutosus. the principal divergence of opinion i see is with concolor. as i recall, they split it off as monophyletic, while i see you guys found it within the western group (helleri, oreganus). perhaps part of the issue is sample matter? i.e., they had more, and more diverse, concolor material in particular to work with (it's convenient to live in colorado). plus their principal interest in the 4 corners area?

cheers,
jimi gragg

>>hi wolfgang,
>>
>>i just scanned your 2000 pook et al paper - thanks for the links. can't compare it physically w/ douglas et al, as the latter's in a box in another state (i'm mid-move, in a protracted way). or particularly intelligently, as i'm a population biologist, certainly no phylogeneticist (never had a single genetics class, even, to my shame). but from longer-term memory, it seems the 2 papers' interpretations are pretty congruent. e.g., a clearly basal cerberus, a principal east-west split in the whole viridis complex, nuntius sunk into a super-paraphyletic viridis, oreganus kind of messy too, caliginus sunk into a less-paraphyletic helleri, abyssus/lutosus pretty darn close, within a paraphyletic lutosus. the principal divergence of opinion i see is with concolor. as i recall, they split it off as monophyletic, while i see you guys found it within the western group (helleri, oreganus). perhaps part of the issue is sample matter? i.e., they had more, and more diverse, concolor material in particular to work with (it's convenient to live in colorado). plus their principal interest in the 4 corners area?

Hi,

No, the difference in terms of how many species should be recognised was not about sample size - our phyogenies very similar.

Douglas et al did find concolor as the sister group of lutosus/herlleri/oreganus/abyssus, whereas we found it as the sister grou of helleri. In each case, statistical (bootstrap) support for the arrangement within the western clade was pretty low.

However, again, the disagreements about species status do not hinge on where concolor branches off (in any case, Douglas et al. raised all the western forms, including abyssus, to species level, soc learly, the branching order of the western forms does not come into it), but about what inferences can and cannot be drawn from mtDNA alone. I have always argued and continue to argue that delimiting species based solely on the presence of mtDNA haplotype clades is inappropriate. Douglas et al. took a different view. This is still being worked on both by us and others, so we will certainly hear more about the C. viridis group.

Cheers,

Wolfgang
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