Danube Delta ursinii are moldavica

[Berislav Horvatic]

Edvard,
don't you think it unwise to show results like that in a public forum prior to publication?
Or have they been published already?

[Edvard Mizsei]

Edvard,
don't you think it unwise to show results like that in a public forum prior to publication?
Or have they been published already?

The sequences are available in the NCBI database (except ours), so anyone can play with tree reconstructions:

AUTHORS Ferchaud,A.L., Ursenbacher,S., Balint,H., Jelic,D.,
Crnobrnja-Isailovic,J., Tomovic,L., Zinenko,A., Arnal,V. and
Montgelard,C.
TITLE The wide but fragmented distribution in the West Palearctic of the
meadow viper does not reflect an east-west pattern of colonization
but a south-north pattern of colonization
JOURNAL Unpublished

Our results have been presented in two hungarian conference and at the last SEH congress. Now we are working on the manuscript, but this work much more GIS modeling than phylogenetics, only for identification we used it.

[Berislav Horvatic]

AUTHORS Ferchaud,A.L., Ursenbacher,S., Balint,H., Jelic,D.,
Crnobrnja-Isailovic,J., Tomovic,L., Zinenko,A., Arnal,V. and
Montgelard,C.
TITLE The wide but fragmented distribution in the West Palearctic of the
meadow viper does not reflect an east-west pattern of colonization
but a south-north pattern of colonization
JOURNAL Unpublished

Oh, God! That's the THIRD version of the title already... and still unpublished.

[Edvard Mizsei]

AUTHORS Ferchaud,A.L., Ursenbacher,S., Balint,H., Jelic,D.,
Crnobrnja-Isailovic,J., Tomovic,L., Zinenko,A., Arnal,V. and
Montgelard,C.
TITLE The wide but fragmented distribution in the West Palearctic of the
meadow viper does not reflect an east-west pattern of colonization
but a south-north pattern of colonization
JOURNAL Unpublished

Oh, God! That's the THIRD version of the title already... and still unpublished.

i know...

[Wolfgang Wüster]

The Ferchaud et al. paper is out in online early view in Journal of Biogeography:


Phylogeography of the Vipera ursinii complex (Viperidae): mitochondrial markers reveal an east–west disjunction in the Palaearctic region

Anne-Laure Ferchaud1,*, Sylvain Ursenbacher2, Marc Cheylan1, Luca Luiselli3, Dušan Jelić4, Bálint Halpern5, Ágnes Major6, Tatiana Kotenko7, Najme Keyan8, Roozbeh Behrooz8, Jelka Crnobrnja-Isailović9,10, Ljiljana Tomović9,11, Ioan Ghira12, Yannis Ioannidis13, Véronique Arnal1, Claudine Montgelard1
Article first published online: 27 JUL 2012

DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2012.02753.x

© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Keywords:
Acridophaga;alpine species;Bayesian inference;European vipers;maximum likelihood;mitochondrial markers;molecular dating;Quaternary climatic fluctuations;steppe;Vipera ursinii complex
Abstract
Aim  The aim of this study was to elucidate the phylogeographical pattern of taxa composing the Vipera ursinii complex, for which the taxonomic status and the dating of splitting events have been the subject of much debate. The objectives were to delimit potential refugia and to date splitting events in order to suggest a scenario that explains the diversification of this species complex.

Location  Western Europe to Central Asia.

Methods  Sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome b and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4 (ND4) genes were analysed for 125 individuals from 46 locations throughout the distribution range of the complex. The phylogeographical structure was investigated using Bayesian and maximum likelihood methods. Molecular dating was performed using three calibration points to estimate the timing of diversification.

Results  Eighty-nine haplotypes were observed from the concatenation of the two genes. Phylogenetic inferences supported two main groups, referred to in this study as the ‘ursinii clade’ and the ‘renardi clade’, within which several subclades were identified. Samples from Greece (Vipera ursinii graeca) represented the first split within the V. ursinii complex. In addition, three main periods of diversification were revealed, mainly during the Pleistocene (2.4–2.0 Ma, 1.4 Ma and 1.0–0.6 Ma).

Main conclusions  The present distribution of the V. ursinii complex seems to have been shaped by Quaternary climatic fluctuations, and the Balkan, Caucasus and Carpathian regions are identified in this study as probable refugia. Our results support a south–north pattern of colonization, in contrast to the north–south colonization previously proposed for this complex. The biogeographical history of the V. ursinii complex corroborates other biogeographical studies that have revealed an east–west disjunction (situated near the Black Sea) within a species complex distributed throughout the Palaearctic region.


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract

[Mario Schweiger]

Would be nice, if somebody have access and mail the paper to me - so I could include it into the DB

Mario

[Wolfgang Wüster]

You have mail

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

The taxonomical considerations are (surprisingly, imho) only discussed in the addenda

Here's what it says =>

"Our study presents an exhaustive molecular phylogeny of the subgenus Acridophaga covering its entire distribution range (Fig. 1a) and including all presently described species and subspecies of the Vipera ursinii complex, with the exception of V. anatolica and the new V. altaica recently described in the Altai and Saur Mountains in Kazakhstan (Tuniyev et al., 2010). Our mtDNA-based results confirmed most of the taxonomic divisions suggested by Nilson & Andrén (2001) founded on morphological and immunological data in their exhaustive review of the subgenus. However, the taxonomic status of three taxa (V. u. gracea, V. u. macrops and V. lotievi) needs to be discussed: (1) Firstly, the molecular analysis revealed that V. ursinii is not monophyletic because V. u. graeca is not included in the ursinii clade. The position of V. u. graeca as the first emergence among Acridophaga is highly supported (Fig. 2). In addition, the P distance between this subspecies and the ursinii + renardi clades (mean P distance: 4.5% ± 0.23%) is similar to the distance between the two species V. seoanei and V. berus. (2) The second surprising result is the non-monophyly of V. u. macrops, which is split into two distinct lineages. Populations from Montenegro and Bosnia are regrouped in the same basal lineage of the Balkan subclade, whereas samples from Croatia constitute a distinct monophyletic subclade more closely related to French and Italian populations of V. u. ursinii (Fig. 2). This result strongly suggests that the monophyly of V. u. macrops should be reconsidered. However, the position of Croatian populations is not clearly defined given the low support (0.69 posterior probability / 73% bootstrap) for the clade including Croatian, French and Italian populations (node T in Fig. 2). Consequently, Croatian populations merit more analyses combining molecular and morphological data to evaluate their distribution and taxonomic status. (3) Our study showed that V. lotievi is included in the renardi subclade, contrary to the morphological studies that excluded it (Nilson & Andrén, 2001). In addition, this taxon seems to be paraphyletic. However, our sampling of the renardi clade is rather limited, and deciphering the genetic distribution and systematic status of this clade will require specific analyses (U. Joger, A. Zinenko & N. Stumpel, pers. comm.). Our results are congruent with the study of Gvoždík et al. (2012) which also highlights an ursinii and a renardi clade, despite a critical shortage in the sampling of the Vipera ursinii complex. Inversely to our result, this study identified a monophyletic V. lotievi, suggesting that more data are needed to specify the status of this taxon.
Our study revealed that the current systematic and taxonomic status among species and subspecies of Acridophaga do not completely conform to the genetic differentiation observed in this study. For example, lower or similar genetic distances to those the ursinii clade (2.02 + 1.47, Table 1) are found within the renardi clade (mean P distance: 1.58 ± 0.89, Table 1). However, most taxa of the renardi clade have been elevated to the species level, whereas the ursinii clade includes only subspecies. Moreover, the genetic distance between the eriwanensis and renardi subclades (2.47 + 0.38) is lower than the distance between the Balkan and ursinii subclades (3.64 + 0.15). Thus, a complete re-evaluation of the taxonomic status of morphological forms within the V. ursinii complex seems to be necessary. Eiselt & Baran (1970) mentioned only one species (V. ursinii; see also Joger et al., 1992), whereas Höggren et al. (1993) identified two species: V. ursinii and V. renardi (Nilson et al., 1995; Nilson & Andrén, 2001; Mallow et al., 2003). According to our mitochondrial data and the phylogenetic/evolutionary species concepts (De Queiroz, 2007), we suggest that the V. ursinii complex could include three species: V. ursinii, V. renardi and V. graeca (the first two corresponding respectively to the ursinii and renardi clades), whereas the subspecies level might be attributed to the different subclades. However, additional molecular (nuclear data) and morphological analyses should be conducted before defining new status (species, subspecies or only populations) for all taxa."

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Isn't greaca as distinct species the complete opposite of the rumor they are just macrops?!

Absolutely. Weird stuff... I hope that nuclear analysis will happen.

[Mario Schweiger]

For fieldherping.eu and/or VipersGarden database members:
PDF-4187 in DB

Mario