T. shanjing is not a species anymore

[Roy van Grunsven]

I do not believe that is an issue at al. Species are single branches of a phylogeny but you can make larger or smaller branches. That is a human categorisation and more a matter of personal preference than of science.
The concept that if they get fertile offspring its a species is useless. The question is do they crossbreed in the wild in a way you get graduall clines from one "species" to the other. Most of the time they do not as they do not co-occur and this question is useless. If you  try to crossbreed in captivity you can crossbreed almost everything. You'll end up with 1 Triturus species including Lissotriton and Mesotriton. Not very helpfull

Species are an artificial concept in contrast to phylogenies.

As shanjing is not monophyletic it can not be a subspecies either.

(About dogs (Canis familiaris) they do crossbreed you just have to pick the largest as female)

[Kamil]

According to phylogenetic systems, you can see each individual as an own species.
Beeing geographically separated doesn't mean that this are different species - does it?
In my opinion, they should do more test with more specimens of t. verrucosus but if the tendency persists, T. shanjing should be an subspecies. In the end will the "User" decide, same like the Garcia Paris or Litvinchuk systematics for Triturus (which I don't accept both).

Best Greetings,

Kamil

[Roy van Grunsven]

No Shanjing can't be a subspecies if this phylogeny is correct. T. shanjing is not a valid taxon on any level as a taxon has to be monophyletic.

[Wouter]

No Shanjing can't be a subspecies if this phylogeny is correct. T. shanjing is not a valid taxon on any level as a taxon has to be monophyletic

And that's how Amphibiaweb seems to treat it too... The last times that I browsed through the list of Salamandridae I noticed a change, but I didn't really realise what it was... They've taken out T. shanjing, not included it in T. verrucosus it just gone! A remarkable action at least.

[®ob]

Wouter, that isn't true. When you look at the T. verrucosus pictures you see that they simply added the T. shanjing pictures into the T. verrucosus map. Even Mark's and Henk's pictures!

[Wouter]

True, which could lead to some confusion since there is now a large amount of extremely polymorphic Crocodile Newts on one account. Just erasing the species info of T. shanjing from one of the prime amphibian information sources seems somewhat preliminary to me.

Sometimes I just seem to miss some of the logica of amphibiaweb, I totally agree with them not to accept names like Epidalea calamita, but they accepted Bufo variabilis (parts of east and southeast Europe) and Bufo balearicus (Tyrrhenian, Balearic islands and south Italian mainland) recently, quite a large change for us old world people who are familiar with good old Bufo viridis... Accepting or losing species seems easily done, while generic or family changes are big issues. But maybe its just my preference... Anyway, its off-topic. I would like to see some pages on the website with questionable taxons, than they move C. chenggongensis from the Salamandridae list too!

[Coen Deurloo]

Sorry to jump in this discussion, but are T. verrucosus interbreeding with T. shanjing in their natural habitat?

[petro pees]

Sorry to jump in this discussion, but are T. verrucosus interbreeding with T. shanjing in their natural habitat?

This question I really like to be answerd to,because if the answer is no than they can
forget everything!!!

[Wouter]

Sorry to jump in this discussion, but are T. verrucosus interbreeding with T. shanjing in their natural habitat?

There have been no records of interbreeding. Maybe it happens in an intergration zone in Yunnan, maybe it doesnt... Again a great lack of information makes this difficult to answer.

[azhael]

Just a thought....could it be something like happens with ring species (like in Ensatinas)?? I don´t know the exact distribution, but maybe it could be the reason why they are genetically close enough so that scientist believe they are a single species, but then again the differences are big enough so that they don´t breed. I´m not saying they are a ring species but maybe something similar happened.

Anyway this taxonomical changes are sometimes obvious and sometimes very hard to believe. For example i was happy when Triturus boscai was changed to Lissotriton boscai....but now i heard they want to separate the species into three different ones. That sounds very hard to digest to me...
I guess in the end all we can do is either blindly believe the scientists work and conclusions, or use the names that suits as better.

[Wouter]

I'm not sure about the ring species idea, but its always a possibility. Someone should look into the geological formation of SE Asia...

Anyway this taxonomical changes are sometimes obvious and sometimes very hard to believe.

Yes true, I guess there is always a kind of preference of the scientist that can be implemented in the paper

For example i was happy when Triturus boscai was changed to Lissotriton boscai....but now i heard they want to separate the species into three different ones. That sounds very hard to digest to me...

You can find this in; Martínez-Solano, I.; Teixeira, J.; Buckley, D.; García-París, M. ( 2006) Mitochondrial DNA phylogeography of Lissotriton boscai (Caudata, Salamandridae): evidence for old multiple refugia in an Iberian endemic. Molecular Ecology 15: 3375-3388.
It's very interesting but there is no morphological comparison yet between the evolutionary lineages.

[®ob]

I'm absolutely no expert on genetics, but I think they should be 2 species looking at their way of life.

But I have to admit, some animals look a lot like each other!
On the next pic you see a very light verrucosus with a brownish coloured shanjing...

[®ob]

by the way, this French site says that hybridisation is known between Tylototriton shanjing and T. taliangensis. I can't find there if it occurred in the wild of in captivity.

Wouter, do you know if there is a transititionzone between those species?

[Wouter]

Wouter, do you know if there is a transititionzone between those species?

Absolutely not, T. shanjing is restricted to Yunnan, T. taliangensis to the highlands of Sichuan. Jurgen Fleck bred hybrids of these two species in captivity years ago, there was a short update about this lectured on Gersfeld last year. The animals are not able to breed f2.

It is indeed striking that these species can produce hybrids...

[Mark]

It's indeed remarkable. It clearly indicates that the genetic differences are not that great between those species. Something you wouldn't tell if you looked just at the morphology...