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Bero,

not by colour, but by noses and adjacent scales for sure!
All the old systematics (summaries in Biella 1983, or in the "handbook") came to the same results on morphology like Ursenbacher et al. on mtDNA.

Mario

Mario Schweiger wrote:Bero,
not by colour, but by noses and adjacent scales for sure!
All the old systematics (summaries in Biella 1983, or in the "handbook") came
to the same results on morphology like Ursenbacher et al. on mtDNA.

This is from the abstract of Ljilja’s paper: “In total, 14 morphometric, five meristic and
nine qualitative traits of 922 specimens (451 males and 471 females) were recorded
and analysed using different multivariate statistics.” And that included, among others,
horn height (from the rostral plate to the top of the horn); snout height (from edge
of the upper lip to the canthus rostralis); height of the rostral plate, and width of
the rostral plate. Simply can’t imagine how she would have got it wrong (on 922
specimens!), while the others get it right...

Prespa lake ammodytes is montadoni, not meridionalis. I am working there more then 2 years with Lj. Tomovic, and they are different from ammodytes ammodytes. On first look they have "heart" shaped heads... there is also more differences in plates.

My own, and also observed in the wild specimens have yellow-green to green tail underside, even brick red specimens.

this is true, i catched > 100 and every specimen had green tail underside

colour to a Montenegro specimen

spot in Montenegro is famous for similar animals, but i founded many "Montenegro-spot" animals in west and south-west Serbia.

Aleksandar,

you and Lilly seem to be the only ones, believing, montandoni is living somewhere in FYROM .
See the map from Ursenbacher et al. 2007

On first look they have "heart" shaped heads...

Head size and proportions are correlated to the individually preference or availability of prey, as shown for V. berus (Forsman, 1991, 1996), Bitis gabonica, Thamnophis sirtalis and V. ammodytes.
Therefore not good parameters for ssp.-differentiation.
And not all Prespa ammos have heart shape heads, not even captive born and raised, like these two of mine, born in 1990 (pictures from 2008)





Mario

very interesting but, for my modest culture and understandig, possible to show a picture with the different name of head's scales ?
Thanks

Mario, it seems to me a matter of how you attribute subspecies (names) to those clades. In other words, is it still useful to talk about montandoni and for that matter any of the traditional subspecies, if you look at the relationships between Ursenbacher's clades? While some samples are very close yet different (NE3 and S1), I wonder if sampling contact zones might turn the differentiation between several clades obsolete (or rather clinal)? Maybe stupid questions...

Schwarz (1936) allready was unable to separate montandoni from meridionalis, and many others had difficulties as well. And looking to Ursenbachers dendrogram, both ssp. cluster very well.
But, if one will accept montandoni, this ssp. should be only used for vipers from E Bulgaria and SE Romania, I think.



Or should we neglect ssp., and think only in clades? Change to clade-herpers


1 = Rostrale, 2 = Nasorostrale, 3 = Nasale, 4 = Canthalia, 5 = Supraoculare, 6 = Loreale, 7 = Sublabialia, 8 = Supralabialia, 9 = Subocularia


A = V. a. ammodytes - NW Bulgaria
B = V. a. montandoni - Romanian Dobrudja
C = V. a. meridionalis - Greece
D = V. a. transcaucasiana - Georgia
R = Rostrale
SR = Suprarostrale

Mario

If you want to call the Eastern subclade montandoni(?), I think you need to give names to numerous other clades.

What is the terra typica of meridionalis? 'Greece' is too vague, since there's more than 1 clade in Greece. If you restrict it to the Southern subclade(?), Cyclades and/or Peloponnese require a name too, I guess. Or maybe I misunderstood?

if one will accept montandoni, this ssp. should be only used for vipers from E Bulgaria and SE Romania

What about NE Greece? Do you assume NE Greece and W Bulgaria to be (largely) meridionalis?

I keep feeling that delimiting (especially infraspecific) taxa is hard without investigation of contact/integradation zones. The fact that gaps remain, makes the practical use of taxon definitions incomplete. More or less in the same context, I find the shading on the Ursenbacher map suggestive - it hints incomplete ranges and mere hypotheses, especially for the contact between SW and S. ((Yet, of course this is a good paper!))

Mario Schweiger wrote:Aleksandar,
you and Lilly seem to be the only ones, believing, montandoni is living somewhere in FYROM .
See the map from Ursenbacher et al. 2007:

Maybe Ljilja should speak for herself, but may I remind you that she is also one of the authors
of Ursenbacher et al. (2008), so she must be fully aware of the "new" situation and must have
changed her mind (pressed by the facts):

S. Ursenbacher, S. Schweiger, L. Tomović, J. Crnobrnja-Isailović, L. Fumagalli, W. Mayer:
Molecular phylogeography of the nose-horned viper (Vipera ammodytes, Linnaeus (1758)):
Evidence for high genetic diversity and multiple refugia in the Balkan peninsula,
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 46 (2008) 1116–1128

In fact, she told me so herself in vivo when we met last time, in October 2010.

Thank's mario