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Posted by WW on October 17, 2001 at 07:53:17:
In Reply to: Re: New Taxonomy of the Elaphe obsoleta complex posted by LBB on October 17, 2001 at 06:52:02:
: There is a manuscript in the works rejecting it. There are simply way too many holes in it. To just name a "few":
I agree that there are some holes in it.
: 2) he used "one" slowly evolving gene (cyt b) to create a phylogeny, which shows matrilinear lines
: and incorporates a mere 5% of the snake mtDNA
However, this is not really one of them - first, Burbrink et al (in the Evolution paper) used two mtDNA genes, cytb and the control region. Second, using 1-2 genes is absolutely standard for phylogeographical analyses of this kind. The sequences they had gave them very high levels of bootstrap support in their tree. Adding in more mtDNA genes is very unlikely to alter the picture at this taxonomic level. Furthermore, all mtDNA genes are inherited as a single linkage unit, and including more mitochondrial gene sequences does not provide independent evidence of phylogeny.
: 3) he "threw out intermediates" and "color pattern" in his analyses
That is indeed a more serious problem - if you want to determine whether groups of populations form different species, then including intermediates does rather affect the outcome.
Basically, I think Burbrink made a pretty good case for abandoning the conventional subspecies. However, his case for establishing the 3 main "obsoleta" mtDNA clades as separate species is less than watertight.
: The reviewers clearly do not know much about Elaphe obsoleta.
Or maybe their comments were ignored... ;-)
Cheers,
Wolfgang
