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After a long period of doubt whether the meadow vipers from the mouth of the river Danube were Vipera u. moldavica, V. renardi, or something else, this now seems to have been settled...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0311005045

Very interesting, thanks!

"Montane subspecies from Europe (V. u. ursinii and V. u. macrops) formed
a sister clade to the two lowland subspecies."

If Anne-Laure Ferchaud & al. are right, then this particular statement is wrong and
their whole tree as well. The obvious reason for that is that for "macrops" they had
only a specimen from Velebit (Croatia) (BTW, how obtained?!), and no specimens of
real macrops from BiH & Montenegro.

With samples from pet trade for renardi and moldavica!?

Please elaborate, Bero. How does a single sample condemn an entire tree? What would be the true (methodological) basis for you to prefer either publication's approach? Do you know more than we do?

What about the markers' value?

Rok Grzelj wrote:With samples from pet trade for renardi and moldavica!?

Surely, you are not shocked by that? If you'd get 1 euro for every tropical species that has not been collected in the wild by the describers, you'd be
filthy rich... Not ideal, of course, but -unfortunately- not necessarily less reliable than any of the other samples (in any paper).

If you take a better look you will notice a sample moldavica from Tiraspol and also renardi from Tiraspol...

Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Please elaborate, Bero. How does a single sample condemn an entire tree? What would be the true (methodological) basis for you to prefer either publication's approach? Do you know more than we do?

I think I gave a hint by writing "macrops" for the Velebit specimens and real macrops for
those from BiH and Montenegro. If "macrops" from Velebit is not macrops at all, then you
get a profoundly wrong tree...
Regarding my "secret knowledge", I can't make public a paper by Ferchauld & al that has not
been published yet, I can only quote from its short summary that HAS been published:

Par ailleurs, les populations analysées de Croatie se
révèlent génétiquement complètement différentes
des autres populations de Vipera ursinii macrops
(même taxon que les populations de Bosnie Herzégovine
et Montenegro). Ce qui nous permet de suggérer une
nouvelle sous-espèce pour ces populations croates.
Pour ceci, il est toutefois nécessaire de faire une
analyse moléculaire complémentaire avec des
marqueurs nucléaires, combinés à une analyse des
caractères morphologiques, avant de statuer sur
l’existence d’une nouvelle sous-espèce.

Sorry, I dont know how to upload a PDF here, but I could send it to you directly.

Thanks, Bero!

Rok Grzelj wrote:If you take a better look you will notice a sample moldavica from Tiraspol and also renardi from Tiraspol...

That's indeed right, Rok. This brings back the question whether renardi and ursinii are indeed 2 species... Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a decent study on reproductive isolation and contact zones of these taxa is still missing?