Danube Delta ursinii are moldavica

[Daniel Bohle]

Technical guide to manage and monitor populations of Orsini's viper

i need this

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Apparently, there's even ursinii beer...

http://www.vipere-orsini.com/fr/communi ... e-d-orsini

[Rok Grzelj]

Apparently, there's even ursinii beer...

http://www.vipere-orsini.com/fr/communi ... e-d-orsini

Ale clade or Lager clade??

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Apparently, there's even ursinii beer...

http://www.vipere-orsini.com/fr/communi ... e-d-orsini

Ale clade or Lager clade??

Since I am a cold-blooded twitcher, I'll take both.

[Berislav Horvatic]

these graecas are the sisters to all other ursinii/renardi

It is exactly that what I find hard to believe. So French, Croatian, Montenegrin ursinii are closer related
to Ukrainian renardi than to graeca??? Biogeography? Morphology has no taxonomic significance?

The title of their paper is this:
From south to north: mitochondrial markers reveal an unexpected colonization route for vipers
of the Vipera ursinii complex in the Palaearctic region.
(It can be found on the webpage of Marc Cheylan, http://www.cefe.cnrs.fr/en/ecologie-et- ... rc-cheylan,
together with the names of all authors.)
Well, "unexpected" means UNEXPECTED, so no surprise that many would be surprised.

IF they have got it right, the ancestors of the "Acridophaga complex" would have originated from the
southern Balkans (Greece), NOT from the Central Asian planes. What remained in Greece, would have
evolved into V. u. graeca, and what migrated to the north, and subsequently east and west, would
have evolved into everything else (the ursinii and renardi clades), including V. renardi, of course.
(See the map of conjectured migrations at the bottom of page 9 of the short summary by A.-L. F.)

So, IN THIS SCENARIO, V. u graeca would be something apart from "everything else", and everything
within the ursinii clade more closely related to everything within the renardi clade than to V. u. graeca.
This would also mean that V. ursinii graeca is no "proper ursinii" after all, and justify its elevation
to the species level as, say, Vipera graeca.

[Mario Schweiger]

I hope, the Ferchaud et al. paper will be a 2011 or early 2012 to read all their thoughts.
It doesnt make sense to speculate about, before we know more.
From the beginning of this topic, I cant sleep and have 1'000 questions - so I hope, these will be answered soon!

Mario

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

That graeca would take a basal position is not impossible, sure, but those other relations...

It doesnt make sense to speculate about, before we know more.

Admin is the smartest .

[Berislav Horvatic]

I hope, the Ferchaud et al. paper will be a 2011 or early 2012 to read all their thoughts.
It doesnt make sense to speculate about, before we know more.
From the beginning of this topic, I cant sleep and have 1'000 questions - so I hope, these
will be answered soon!

Well, after SO MUCH time the paper is STILL "pending", that is, stuck with the referees
of the Journal of Biogeography, but in the meantime, according to the webpage of the
first author, Anne-Laure Ferchaud,
http://www.cefe.cnrs.fr/ecologie-et-bio ... e-ferchaud,
the title has been slightly changed, from
"From south to north: mitochondrial markers reveal an unexpected colonization route
for vipers of the Vipera ursinii complex in the Palaearctic region"
to
"From south to north: mitochondrial markers reveal a colonization route for vipers of
the Vipera ursinii complex in the Palaearctic region and an east-west Mediterranean
disjunction".
The change indicates that the original version of the manuscript had been rejected, and
the paper resubmitted in an improved (?) form, but that's only an "educated guess", for I
honestly know nothing about it.
However, I'm a bit proud of their deleting "an unexpected" from the title, as that's just
what I had suggested to A-L F a year ago, on the grounds that a term like "unexpected"
has no place in the title of a scientific paper... Unexpected to WHOM? Nilson & Andren?
Mario Schweiger? Myself? I forgot which "more modest" adjective I had suggested instead,
but obviously the referees had rougly the same objection...
I strongly hope the paper will finally come through, so we can all discuss the whole issue
on the equal footing and "with open cards", whatever the opinions.

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Pfffff...

What's wrong with...
"on the grounds that I personally think that a term like "unexpected"
has no place in the title of a scientific paper"
?

Please go to Web of Knowledge and enter "unexpected" and e.g. Nature. Surely, not all reviewed by incompetent pseudo-scientists.

I don't see why "unexpected" cannot adequately indicate the discovery of something that goes against current paradigms. Other than that, I think nearly no-one on this forum really cares. Luckily there's this quarrelsome Belgian biologist

[Berislav Horvatic]

Pfffff...
What's wrong with...
"on the grounds that I personally think that a term like "unexpected"
has no place in the title of a scientific paper"
?
Please go to Web of Knowledge and enter "unexpected" and e.g. Nature. Surely, not all reviewed by incompetent pseudo-scientists.
I don't see why "unexpected" cannot adequately indicate the discovery of something that goes against current paradigms. Other than that, I think nearly no-one on this forum really cares. Luckily there's this quarrelsome Belgian biologist

First of all, Anne-Laure Ferchaud had NOT followed my advice and the first version of the paper was submitted
with "unexpected" in its title. Someone else is to be "held responsible" for its removal from the title, maybe the
referees suggested it, I simply don't know.
My suggestion had been to replace "unexpected" with something more modest - less provocative - less emotional
- more to the facts, but I really can't remember what it was. It is true, as you say, that something that goes against
current paradigms could be termed "unexpected", but I PERSONALLY THINK that I PERSONALLY prefer less aggressive
ways of stating that in a title - telling everybody in the face "Look how stupid all of you have been!" even before they
start reading the thing. In short, I PERSONALLY don't like today's marketing orientation penetrating scientific writing.
You've probably noticed that I never make use of "emoticons" ("smilies") either...
And, of course, I'm fully aware that nearly no-one on this forum really cares about subtleties like that. My principal
intention was to inform all of you that the paper is not quite dead, that it shows at least some signs of being still
alive, and could therefore be expected in print after all.