Oh, well. The taxonomy of the grass snake is moving forvard. Again the former subspecies recieved a full species status, as it happened with many other widely distributed polytypic and polymorphic species. Earlier in 2016 the Iberian grass snake has been elevated to the full species,
Natrix astreptophora (see
Pokrant et al., 2016).
Previous large changes in
Natrix taxonomy concerned the problematic status of the Big-headed grass snake (
N. megalocephala). As result most (but not all!) specialists concluded that "
N. megalocephala" is not valid species, but a melanistic morph of
N. natrix.
Like, can the green montepeliar snakes - sometimes with a colour like a Jameson's mamba, with yellow abdominal scales, can be classified as a separate species from the brown specimens of the Malpolon monspessulanus
Montpellier snakes exhibits strong sexual dimorphism in size and colouration. The greenish snakes with yellow bellies are males, and the spotted brownish ones with white bellies are females and juveniles.
whether the population of Vipera ammodytes in R. Macedonia is belonging to meridionalis or ammodytes subspecies, or they are both present in the country and if yes, they are probably hybridizing.
The problem with
Vipera ammodytes is that the current taxonomy of this species is controversial and has been based on morphological characters only and almost lacking support from molecular phylogeny studies. The last large study of
V. ammodytes systematics to my knowledge is
Tomović L. (2006) Systematics of nose-horned Viper (Vipera ammodytes, Linnaeus, 1758). According to this study the most part of Macedonia is occupied by
Vipera ammodytes montandoni, while small northern-western part of the country lies in the transition zone between
V. a. montandoni and
V. a. ammodytes. The same was indicated in 2013 study of the
distribution of the genus Vipera in the western and central Balkans. It is not surprising because Liljana Tomović is one of the authors
However, in the study of molecular phylogeoraphy (
Ursenbacher et al., 2007) the single sample from Macedonia falls into southern subclade (of the southern-eastern clade) together with several samples from Greece. Authors define these samples as
V. a. meridionalis according to literature that they use.
care to share your sources?
While we can't expect journalists to be well-versed in the details of genetics and species splitting, it is vexing when they make entirely inaccurate claims that then get repeated.
