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Mario Schweiger wrote:Croatia - please no Typhlops.

I fully agree. And no Blanus strauchi either. So, the species list for Croatia is now OK.

Mario, about Bulgarian ursinii - does the Chimaira book say that this is the animal from that paper? I checked it and did not find any reference about it...
(BTW, Ilian's link is of another book, but I cannot get to see what it says about ursinii...)

Typhlops - so what's the story behind this?
http://www.landesmuseum.at/pdf_frei_rem ... 1-0162.pdf

My mistake again, with bilineata in Lux.

Mario Schweiger wrote:The Catalonia/Andorra Atlas says C. girondica, not austriaca?

Dunno, but know who to ask.

BTW, allow me to start a little viper war on the side - Vipera renardi 's species status is as weakly substantiated as that of Bufo verucossimus. But maybe I mention this already before.

BTW, Ilian's link is of another book, but I cannot get to see what it says about ursinii...)

Yes, that's because theres nothing in your PDF. The text is different from that in the book. Very strange, it's the same article but maybe they've found out about the hoax after they published the article, and the book was printed after that, so they fixed it.

Click that link again - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=I3TaFGsQHKMC&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86&dq=vipera+ursinii+Bulgaria+hoax&source=bl&ots=rZoc7SfHt_&sig=pO8hpnwwpju6Ulwo7_tYRQ1PpNA&hl=bg&sa=X&ei=q-nBULjbHYi7hAe134HYCw&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=vipera%20ursinii%20Bulgaria%20hoax&f=false

Then in "2. Brief History of the Herpetological Research in Bulgaria", scrow down a bit; it's in the paragraph that begins with "In recent years, herpetologists studied..."
The last sentance is " The recent report by Hristov, et al. (2004) of Vipera ursinii, considered extinct in Bulgaria, proved to be a hoax."

Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Mario, about Bulgarian ursinii - does the Chimaira book say that this is the animal from that paper? I checked it and did not find any reference about it...
(BTW, Ilian's link is of another book, but I cannot get to see what it says about ursinii...)

Typhlops - so what's the story behind this?
http://www.landesmuseum.at/pdf_frei_rem ... 1-0162.pdf

1) Yes its the same specimen!
Andrej Stojanov told me the story in 2008, when me met at a German herpetological meeting. So one of the first authors found it two times - 1st north of the Danube (exact locality unknown) and 2nd at the mentioned place in Bulgaria

2) The "earth-worm story"
As written in the Typhlops paper, the collection of earth-worms took place on Dugi Otok in July 1977 (but nothing is written, this was primaly an earth-worms collecting) and the container was stored at the university of Vienna until 1999 (22 Years!).
Peter Weish is an expert in earth-worms. So he should have known, this was no earth-worm, but "something else" when he collected it.
In 1999 they brought the container to the museum for final conservation, and - amazingly - there was a Blind Snake between the worms.
So - and thats not my opinion only - this Typhlops came into this container by "accident", but nobody knows how.

3) Your ursinii - renardi war
Jeroen, these two vipers are completely different. Look at the head shape of this "Bulgarian" specimen, the coloring. Also renardi gets much larger than ursinii, different dorsal scale rows, etc.

4) P. tauricus in Montenegro:
I know this blured picture!
Together with Peter Keymar I have been at this trash deposit at Podgorica in April and May 2011 (beginning and end of our trip).
And we found some tauricus looking like lizards.
But by DNA they have been melis!

Mario

Wonderful, Mario, thanks for those replies.

1) BG ursinii: OK, thanks, very good to know!

2) Sounds like sloppy science ... So no one actually published a critique to this record? Maybe in some Croatian paper or book, Bero?

3) Remember that graeca is the basal clade of the whole bunch = that's morphology for you... It kinda pleases me that nowadays species status takes more evidence into account.
BUT I am not saying you are wrong - there's just at this moment no compelling evidence by contemporary standards.

4) Who did you here from? Werner Mayer? It told him about it a couple of years ago and showed him the picture (not that blurry... ) that you can see below. He, at least, had -at the time- no doubt that this is tauricus. What do you think?



This is the place of origin =>
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8 ... e47f5061f3

Is that the spot you checked out?

P. tauricus:
I'm not sure, if this is the picture, Werner showed us(me), because this doesnt look such blur and indeed, it looks very like tauricus.
Yes, its (nearly) the same location. We looked more around the walls (all 3 sides).
We have a lot of dicussion, how tauricus tauricus (if this is one) may have reached the area - via the Drin river from the Ohrid/Prespa area, maybe?

Mario

Yes. Or a silly introduction... In any case, an unconfirmed record. Do you have pics of the tauricus-like animals you saw there?

Good discussion, btw

Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Sounds like sloppy science ... So no one actually published a critique to this record?
Maybe in some Croatian paper or book, Bero?

No. Last Friday I tried to "erase" Typhlops vermicularis and Blanus strauchi from the official list on the webpage
of the Croatian Herpetological Society, http://www.hhdhyla.hr/index.php?page=gmazovi, but was told to wait
for some more time...