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Posted by Dave Beamer on October 14, 1998 at 19:38:40:
In Reply to: Herptiles native to Indiana, subspecies taxonomic breakdown. posted by Ron Allen on October 14, 1998 at 18:01:44:
I will make comments on the salamander taxonomy as that is my area of particular expertise. You missed giving P. richmondi a star as it is a native species. C. bishopi, N. louisianensis, A. marvoratium, A. californiense, D. conanti, E. guttolineata, P. angusticlavius (you had a mis-spelling on this one )have all been recognized as full species while the remaining supspecies have been synomized with the nominate form. In addition the sirens are currently about to be revised. AS you can see with the group I have expertise with, does not contain all the subspecies that you originally indicated in fact with the exception of the siren which is being worked on right now there are none. I suggest that the other taxa would follow suit. I do have some experience with turtle taxonomy as well and if you wish I could address a least a few of those issues. In addition I would like to point out that your references are generally not taxonomic works. If you are interested in this subject more appropriate refs would have included Frost Amphibian Species of the World. While the authors of your references are "expert" herpetologists that does not mean they are "expert" taxonomists. One only needs to look at how many species have been desciribed, sank ect by the authors in your list of references to see that these people are generally not taxonomists. I will pull out a few quotes by herp taxonomists. In Herpetologica Vol 53:3 on page 354 Dr. Highton states "With the elevation of P. angusticlavius to species status, no recognized subspecies remain in the largest genus of North American salamanders". Surely this demonstrates the discarding of subspecies. In addition they have been discarded from use at the Field Museum, American Museum of Natural History, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, University of Arizona, University of Kansas, and the University of Michigan ect (these are all institutions that are active in taxonomic research). I quote from Frost Herpetologica 46:1 p. 94 "The subspecies category has long been abused for naming arbitrarily defined "slices" of clines (and lists as an example L. triangulum that you used in your list). These "slices" are clearly not evoltionary entities under any definition of the term." In Herpetological Review 23:2 p. 50 Frost states "We do not understand the reason for Mantanucci's appeal to tradition (the widespread use of subspecies in field guides and other literature) to support the use of trinomials. This has nothing do with scientific discourse". I would also like to quote Collin Herpetological Review 23:2 p. 45 "The use of subspecies in major herpetological field guides is an historical anomoly that is on the wane (see Collins 1990: Table 3), and very few new subspecies have been described from the United States (only one in the three major English-language herpetological journals in the last quarter century. To this add the elimination of the use of subspecies names in many of the major herpetological preserved collections in this country, and it becomes clear that the current unnatural assemblage of subspecies listed in Collins 1990 (this is the same as your Collins 1997) has fallen into disfavor and is being widely ignored. Clearly you spent a long time compiling your list and have some interest in taxonomy. If you are interested in any of the refs. I have provided and do not have access to them I would be more than glad to send copies to you or anyone else who is interested.
Dave Beamer
