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Re: Balkan vipers

PostPosted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 7:25 pm
by Berislav Horvatic
Thomas Bader wrote:Yes Bero, I meant the second one between croatica and macrops. Dusan presented it last year in Vienna and if I remember correctly, it was quite a clear border with a high difference between the two clades

They do seem to be well separated genetically, but to find the physical border in the field, one needs many more
field trips... And Bosnia is heavily mined, which does not help... We have an "educated guess" where the border
MIGHT lie, but it has to be confirmed by more DATA.
You may have noticed that in this paper they do not insist on subspecies at all - for most of the time they just talk
about the SPECIES V. ursinii in this region, whatever it might comprise.
BTW, the conspicuous wide gap between Montenegro and Macedonia proved NOT to divide what we expected...
the "educated guess" proved too nice & simple to be true... which was a nice warning not to jump to conclusions
too fast in other cases as well.
Patience, my friend. People are working on it, and I'm also eager to hear the final results.

Re: Balkan vipers

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 9:05 am
by Thomas Bader
Thank you Bero for your detailled clarifications!

Re: Balkan vipers

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 10:40 am
by Jeroen Speybroeck
Berislav Horvatic wrote:the conspicuous wide gap between Montenegro and Macedonia

Is this a true gap? I don't know the region at all, so this might be a silly question, but is the available sampling sufficient to guestimate that? Lack of potential habitat?

Re: Balkan vipers

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 11:17 am
by Daniel Bohle
Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Is this a true gap?

I would say yes, looking at google you can see that there is a "line" with altitudes around 600 meters between both areas.

Re: Balkan vipers

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 12:43 pm
by Berislav Horvatic
Not quite a "line" - just have a look at the map of the Balkan peninsula in an oldfashioned atlas - it's much
more obvious than in "Google Earth":

Dinarisches_Gebirge_SE.jpg

There is a rather broad lowland region separating the southeastern Dinarides and the Scardo-Pindic
(Šara-Pindos) mountain range. Just follow the rivers Bojana and Drim/Drin upstream... then Beli Drim
(Alb.: Drini i Bardhë) further upstream...
Metohija is is a large basin and the name of the region covering the southwestern part of Kosovo. It is
23 km wide at its broadest point and about 60 km long, at an average altitude of 450 m above sea level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metohija

Re: Balkan vipers

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 5:35 pm
by Jeroen Speybroeck
Great! Love that map.

Re: Balkan vipers

PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 11:35 pm
by Ilian Velikov
Great! Love that map.


If you like this map maybe you'll enjoy this if you don't know about it yet - http://www.maps-for-free.com/
It's basicly the same style of maps but online and you can control layers and use the maps for free.

Re: Balkan vipers

PostPosted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 7:59 am
by Guillaume Gomard
Thanks for the link Ilian, very useful!