New or Not

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Re: New or Not

Postby Clive Brignull » Fri Jul 24, 2015 7:04 pm

Yes, I have become a bit of a twitcher with a tick list. But don't we all plan our herping trips to see new species even when these species are so similar to those already found. Its the challenge to find something new. I do not feel the need to seek,find and photograph the same species over and over again. If the subject has already been found and photographed it is not actively searched for again. The time can be better spent looking for those not seen before. Makes sense ??. None of the possible new species mentioned in my first post are added to any list and will not be until varified. PS. The species mentioned are from many many years ago when a Tree frog was a Tree frog and a Slow worm was a Slow worm. As i am now getting older many of these places/countries may not visited again.
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Re: New or Not

Postby Paul Lambourne » Fri Jul 24, 2015 10:00 pm

Clive

I think the point Sean was making, was the fact that its almost impossible to positively ID species just from a distant memory of something seen in a particular country years ago, without a photo to compare diagnostic features..

I don't think Sean was suggesting the repeated photographing of species, just taking a picture to ID a specimen before placing it on your tick list.
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Re: New or Not

Postby Clive Brignull » Sat Jul 25, 2015 12:18 am

Do you really believe that photo's of these species would help ?? The natural variation of these species would make it impossible to ID without it's distribution range. I'm sure we have all found that no two creatures are exacly the same. As for scale count numbers etc, often (for example) it will read something like this...4---6 or 5---8, making 5 or 6 that could be either and of little help. I do have photo's but in those days when you got the pictures back from the developers they were not always as good as expected.That is certainly the case with mine and no ID other than the Genus would be ascertained. But that was all that was needed in those days. Do you no all i wanted was a yes, no, or uncertain and i would have been happy, not the Spanish Inquistion from fellow Brits. I think i might as well give up on this topic. The End.
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Re: New or Not

Postby Paul Lambourne » Sat Jul 25, 2015 2:48 pm

Clive,

I have to disagree with you, IMHO, photos are a great aid to identification, you can check, for example labial scale number and position, ear size and position, toe scaleation ..all manner of identifying features. All I was trying to outline to you was, yes range is important, but also confirmation from visual identifiers is also critical.

As for your comment regarding " the Spanish inquisition" and the fact we are "fellow brits" .. you asked for opinion, I'm sorry you took umbridge because you did not get the answer you hoped for..are you suggesting as we reside in the same country we should just agree with you? Most of my herping friends are from mainland Europe, Holland, Belgium,Germany, Switzerland,Spain etc and in my humble opinion, they are far more knowledgeable, enthusiastic and scrupulous regarding ID than most brits! IMHO there are very few serious field herping brits.. the ones I know of, Kevin, Matt, Liam,Trevor, Sean etc are equally scrupulous about what they will add to their list.. (obviously John, Wolfgang etc are legendary herpers, but tend to concentrate on global rather than Euro herping)

Finally your comment "the end" .. seriously ??? this is a forum for field herpers not teenage girls...
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Re: New or Not

Postby Clive Brignull » Sat Jul 25, 2015 9:48 pm

Well how can I end it there....As i'm sure you are aware, historically, and at the time of the capture in question, the eastern tree frog, Hyla orientalis, was not distinguished from H. Arborea (Linnaeus, 1758). It wasn't until the research of Stöck et al. (2008), on the molecular data of treefrogs in south-eastern Europe and western Anatolian H. arborea populations, that it gained individual species recognition, therefore splitting the H. arborea species. Further studies into this topic, Gvozvik (2010), Gul et al., (2012) have similarly recognised differences in mtDNA, rhodopsin and tyrosinase data between not only H. arborea and H. orientalis species but also H. savignyi. Along somewhat related lines, Kaya and Simmons (1999) amongst others have additionally managed to distinguish between H. arborea and H. savignyi species through bioacoustic studies, however, I have not been able to find relevant literature to suggest a difference between H. arborea and H. orientalis calls. While all of these studies may indeed help to identify individual species in the lab, such data is obviously unachievable at the field level through observation. As such, it must thusly fall primarily on both your personal knowledge of the characteristics of the species, and the location of the find in regards to its distance from introgression zones, as the further out from an introgression zone you travel, the greater the probability of the species being formerly identified (Verardi et al., 2009) (which in this case, was on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, near to the Romanian border,which I presume to be well within the distribution zone of H. orientalis). Thusly, and in relation to my original query that started this topic thread, is there any means in which to ID the treefrog species that I found in the above mentioned location?
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Re: New or Not

Postby Paul Lambourne » Sun Jul 26, 2015 1:42 pm

Clive,

I believe your original question was " I believe the Bulgarian Tree frog to be H.orientalis, Turkish Slow worm to be A. colchina, Bulgarian Slow worm to be A.graeca in that region, Spanish psammadromus, P.hispanica in that region. ?????" not specific to orientalis.

And without going round in circles, I personally feel, with just a distant memory of seeing the species, many of them (not necessarily all of them ) would be hard to definitively ID by range alone. Just check out the distribution of slow worms in Bulgaria and it will highlight the problem of just assuming a species is a particular individual from range alone.

If you want to add them to your list, its a matter for you...

Jeroen or Mario will undoubtedly know far, far more on the distribution and intergressional zones of the species you mentioned.. maybe you could seek some advice from them..I know Jeroen is away at the moment, not sure about Mario..

As I said before, shortly there will be a concise guide to Euro herps published which will will not doubt help you with your IDs.
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Re: New or Not

Postby Mario Schweiger » Mon Jul 27, 2015 10:39 am

little is known on the distribution borders of the three European species, fragilis, colchica and graeca.

Gvozdik et al., 2010 had only one colchica specimen from Romania (see map.) no specimen (any species) from Bulgaria. For morphological differences they wrote: 4.5. Current knowledge of morphological differentiation.- The morphology of the newly recognized species is not known sufficiently, as many available morphological studies (Lác, 1967;
Shcherban’, 1976; Voipio, 1962; Wermuth, 1950) dealt with samples containing mixtures of different species. Nonetheless, some morphological traits historically distinguishing two morphotypes (e.g. Dely, 1981), i.e. ‘‘fragilis” and ‘‘colchica”, could be roughly applied to A. fragilis s.s. (prefrontal shields in broad contact; ear opening indistinct; 24–26 scales around the midbody; blue dorsal spotting infrequent, present only inmales) and A. colchica (prefrontal shields usually separated, sometimes in point contact and only rarely in broad contact; ear opening usually distinct, visible; 26–30 scales around the midbody; blue dorsal spotting frequent in males and occasionally present also in females), respectively. A. graeca remains morphologically the most enigmatic, as its populations are known to display intermediate ormosaic characters of the ‘‘fragilis” and ‘‘colchica” morphotypes (Cabela and Grillitsch, 1989; Grillitsch and Cabela, 1990). Detailed morphological study of the species complex is under preparation by the authors.

Therefore the best diagnosis is counting the scale-rows around midbody ;)
anguis_distr.jpg
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Re: New or Not

Postby Clive Brignull » Mon Jul 27, 2015 6:30 pm

Your input, Mario, is much appreciated.
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Re: New or Not

Postby Mario Schweiger » Tue Jul 28, 2015 2:33 pm

for some European amphibians, I found this website with sonograms and voices.
http://www.avisoft.com/sounds.htm#frogs
Hyla arborea from Crete = Hyla kretensis
Rana ridibundus from Crete = Pelophylax cretensis
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Re: New or Not

Postby Mario Schweiger » Fri Aug 14, 2015 1:42 pm

in a brand new paper, the authors give now the approx. border between H. arborea and H. orientalis (at least in the more southern parts).
hyla.jpg

Dufresnes, C., A. Brelsford, J. Crnobrnja-Isailovic, N. Tzankov, P. Lymberakis & N. Perrin (2015): Timeframe of speciation inferred from secondary contact zones in the European tree frog radiation (Hyla arborea group).- BMC Evolutionary Biology 15:155. 8 pp. -- PDF-8104 in DB
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