Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Gday John.
Good to see you're back at Riversleigh.
Have you managed to come across any more Pailsus up there and are you able to legally catch and retain live specimens and/or lodge them at the Q Museum?
Including your "lost one" only five of the things are known so far.
ALL THE BEST

Hi Raymond,

I've not seen any Pseudechis pailsi alive yet (as I explained in another email as well as posts here, I like genera to be monophyletic and morphologically cohesive; Pseudechis sensu lato may be an old lineage but it's certainly diagnosable, and not unwieldy by any means). Having examined and photographed a fresh specimen in 1987 (the 'lost' one you mention) I have not doubted it was distinct from P. australis, but will be doing what I can to discover relevant evidence.

I see you're now also omitting the 'e' in 'pailsei', that was one of those Baroque touches that just had to go (on the model of Acanthophis wellsei Hoser -> wellsi in Aplin and Donnellan 1999). Cheers!
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John D. Scanlon
Riversleigh Fossil Centre
Outback at Isa
Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia

Ray,

You will be delighted to know that we have obtained additional material and included mtDNA sequences in our forthcoming paper.

Cheers,

WW
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WW Home

Is this the long awaited paper by David Williams that he said was going to be published in a "peer reviewed journal" by end 1998 that six years later we are still waiting for?
And/or is this using DNA from the alleged "Pailsus pailsi" that I later inspected in 2003 and found to be nothing more than a normal P. australis?
It'd be nice if you can fill in the blanks if you are able to.
Cheers

Unfortunately, you will have to wait until the paper is published, like everyone else. In the meantime, do keep entertaining us with your paranoid delusions and conspiracy theories, it's always nice to start the day with a chuckle over morning coffee.

Cheers,

WW
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WW Home

WW you seem to think that making immature remarks about myself will act as a defense for your own shonky practices.
The header above sums up what's needed.
Cheers

"And/or is this using DNA from the alleged "Pailsus pailsi" that I later inspected in 2003 and found to be nothing more than a normal P. australis?"

That is an interesting point. If the mtDNA material is not from a taxon in dispute, it will of course not show any difference. This can be checked because the exact specimen and locality from which mtDNA has been extracted will be identified in the paper. But even if the source of the mtDNA is not in dispute, mtDNA data cannot be used to show whether two animals are the same species or not, since it is not possible to delimit species using mtDNA data because such data is simply genetic distance data. A species which has arisen quite recently can show minimal mtDNA divergence from its parental species, but it can evolve considerably morphologically in that short span of time. On the othe hand, 2 populations of the same species can show much more mtDNA divergence without displaying any changes in morphology.

Bottom line is this, it will take much more than mtDNA data to show that two populations are conspecific and it will take much more than mtDNA data to show that they are not.