Mario Schweiger wrote:Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:That Macroprotodon looks very intriguing. Of course, I'm no expert of that stuff. I think no one really has a comprehensive overview on the huge variability in Macroprotodon pattern. Interesting little snakes...
May be, this will helpor will do more confusion
WADE, E. (2001): Review of the False Smooth snake genus Macroprotodon (Serpentes, Colubridae) in Algeria with a description of a new species.-- Bull. nat. Hist. Mus. Lond. (Zool.) 67(1): 85-107. -- PDF-3999
Summary: The characters used to define Macroprotodon cucullatus mauritanicus Guichenot are re-evaluated. The taxa. M. c. cucullatus. M. c. brevis and M. c. mauritanicus are considered to be full species. The populations occurring in northern Algeria- from Algiers eastwards to Northern Tunisia are retained as M. mauritanicus. Those populations from Algiers westwards into Morocco as far as Melilla are recognised as a new species, M. abubakeri. The populations inhabiting the regions further south are morphologically closer to M. cucullatus Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and are assigned to that species. The status of M. c. ibericus Busack & McCoy is discussed.
Mario
Yes, this is a interesting work, but one more time, later a genetic analysis confuse this more!!!
Carranza, S., Arnold, E.N., Wade, E. & Fahd, S. 2004. Phylogeography of the false smooth snakes, Macroprotodon (Serpentes, Colubridae): mitochondrial DNA sequences show European populations arrived recently from Northwest Africa. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 33 (3): 523-532
For example M. mauritanicus can´t be recoginized. See for example the Jeroen comments about my inocent comment
Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Gabriel Martínez wrote:Hi guys!! Macroproton of Balearic islands were introduced from Tunissia or east Algeria and they are the subspecies mauritanicus (no cucullatus)!
I assume you mean 'species'? Well, doesn't really matter actually, because as already argued by Crochet & Dubois (2004) and adopted by Speybroeck & Crochet (2007) (and implicitly also by Speybroeck et al., 2010), this seems rather incorrect. Wade (2001) assigned the different species based on morphology. To put it short, imho, he more or less went too far with splitting. This seems to be confirmed by molecular work from 2004. Considering the phylogeny of Carranza et al. (2004), it is clear that (their) cucullatus cucullatus is placed in the same clade as mauritanicus (see tree on p. 527).
To treat mauritanicus as a distinct species, textilis would have to be redefined. Taking into account the polyphyletic nature of cucullatus textilis (note also nomenclatural issues with this name!), it seems at least premature to distinguish between mauritanicus and cucullatus at the species level, but in my opinion at any level at all. Surprisingly, Carranza et al. (2004) seemed to maintain the -imho- by their work (partially) rejected species of Wade (2001), treating the single cucullatus cucullatus sample as a species different of mauritanicus. Unfortunately, this has been copied without question.
http://molevol.cmima.csic.es/carranza/pdf/Macroprotodon.pdf
Quote: "As noted, mitochondrial DNA strongly supports three monophyletic units within Macroprotodon: the newly described M. abubakeri and clades consisting largely of M. mauritanicus and M. brevis. In contrast, individuals assigned to M. cucullatus on the basis of morphology are associated with either M. mauritanicus or M. brevis, making these paraphyletic and indicating
that the M. cucullatus specimens cannot be regarded as belonging to a single monophyletic species."
Please read the first sentence. Since the only available cucullatus cucullatus sample nests with mauritanicus, this group has to be called cucullatus in total.
Since
(a) cucullatus as a name has clear priority over mauritanicus,
(b) nuclear evidence is lacking, as well as study of introgression levels and samples of the 'cucullatus' near the range of abudakeri,
(c) textilis is polyphetically scattered in the tree and
(d) splitting between mauritanicus and cucullatus seems at the moment quite clearly a bridge too far + discordant with not splitting between brevis and ibericus at species level,
it seems most sensible to accept only three species: brevis, abudakeri and cucullatus.
This has been -at least to me opinion- properly adopted by the IUCN reviewers =>
http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/61533/0
EDIT:
Therefore, I call the Balearic populations Macroprotodon cucullatus. Maybe Macroprotodon cucullatus mauritanicus but quite surely not (yet) Macroprotodon mauritanicus. As such, the vernacular name "Algerian False Smooth Snake" becomes a bit 'narrow', but that's not that big a problem, of course.
). It´s a intermedius M. monspessulanus monspessulanus x M.m. saharatlanticus, very typical in Souss Valley and between Agadir-Tiznit. Carranza et al´s studies don´t include any saharatlanticus samples in the analysis to confirm the subspecies status of saharatlanticus or leave it as a desertic morph of M.m.monspessulanus. But -very rare- a Essaouira sample of this analysis show distance with the rest of samples!!! BUt in Essaouira looks 100% M.m.monspessulanus!!!!!!! 
It´s the caos and more genetic analysis (with nuclear markers) are needed...
