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The supposed border is indirectly questioned by the molecular data Thomas referred to.

I wouldn't bet too much on morphology, let alone colouration, as reliable to distinguish them.

This green throat in bilineata is ONLY AT HATCHLINGS something to distinguish them from viridis. Changes in viridis - as far as I know - from yellow to greenish in the "birth-year".
Therefore you may distinguish these two FORMS only in the first days of life!



Mario

Thanks for posting that, it reminded me that I have this book at home myself Besides now i know wherefrom i had this information (..wrong in my mind).
Do you have the 1991 Rykena paper?

I wouldn't bet too much on morphology, let alone colouration, as reliable to distinguish them.

At least, if you'd find a hatchling with a green throat within the viridis distribution, it might very likely be that it's bilineata or influenced by it.

Gerald Ochsenhofer wrote:

I wouldn't bet too much on morphology, let alone colouration, as reliable to distinguish them.

At least, if you'd find a hatchling with a green throat within the viridis distribution, it might very likely be that it's bilineata or influenced by it.

Has this been investigated across the entire range of both taxa? Even then, I wouldn't be surprised to see this rule violated...
In the end, even assuming that it would be reliable, I think we can agree that it's of limited practical use, right?

At least, if you'd find a hatchling with a green throat within the viridis distribution, it might very likely be that it's bilineata or influenced by it.

Has this been investigated across the entire range of both taxa? Even then, I wouldn't be surprised to see this rule violated...
In the end, even assuming that it would be reliable, I think we can agree that it's of limited practical use, right?

I'm getting the message, even though I think that those things ("rule violation" & limited use & possible lack of knowledge vs. high likelihood of bilineata [influence]) don't exclude each other.. hm.. but to be honest that's a trickier thought than I thought.

Gerald Ochsenhofer wrote:a trickier thought than I thought.

I agree & like the way you phrased that

Uh, I missed the discussion.

Has this been investigated across the entire range of both taxa?

What Werner M. told me is:
The east Adriatic clade from Cres down to Korfu and (whereever this form occurs) is a third clade and is not the same than bilineata (but nearer to it than to viridis).
When I saw more of these animals, I could clearly see differences to Austrian viridis. The juveniles are completely different - it is not only the throat, but the whole dorsum is mostly green, not grey. The green of the adults is a bit different in many individuals. They seem to be a bit more slender and the blue of the throat is also different. And finally the two stripes are the nominal feature for (female) bilineata, not for viridis, where you find this not so often, at least in Austria. Of course this can be only regional differences.
Edo Razzetti sent a pic of a Corfu Lacerta cf. viridis, which I try to post here

He assigned it to L. viridis meridionalis, but Werner told me, that this one belongs also to this seperate clade.

Werner also does not support the different species for viridis and bilineata, what he said is that the (MT DNA) differences of different muralis (eg. nigriventris - muralis) are far higher than between viridis and bilineata.

Has this been investigated across the entire range of both taxa? Even then, I wouldn't be surprised to see this rule violated...

I don't believe that's a reliable difference because I've found a lot of juvenile viridis with green throats in Bulgaria where billineata is absent, such as those two below.
Besides, it doesn't take long for juvenile viridis throats to turn from white to green, so if it has a green throat you might consider it to be billineat only if it's freshly hatched or a few days old...any older than that and I wouldn't count on the throat colour.





Thomas, all of the features you pointed out for billineata (or that third clade) could be present in viridis as well. In fact looking at your photo the only difference with viridis I find is that there are no black spots over the green anywhere on this individual. I've never seen so 'cleanly' green viridis.

Thanks for the pics!

..as I hinted before, after some years out of "hatchling" it got "juvenile/subadult".. my personal conclusion: myth busted.

And actually now I'm counting the hours until the first pic of a green throated hatchling from e-europe pops up;-)

Wow, i wasn't prepared for this polemic, but it is quite interesting.
If you wan't, i have some juveniles pictures from the same place, but i can not swear they are less than a week old