Calotes. This
happens when we can't automatically assign an identification to one of the
output taxa.
Review identifications of Calotes versicolor 31281
Taxonomic Split 145005
(Committed on 2024-08-19)
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split into |
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Comments
The main question is where to draw the line between C. wangi and C. versicolor s. str. in Northern Vietnam and Yunnan Province.
Well currently I'm referring to Huang et al. (2023), which only lists one Vietnam area (Lang Son) as a locality of C. wangi. To draw a clear line between the two species will require fine scale sampling in the area, which would be another paper. The point of this split is to quickly deal with the C. wangi observations. By excluding uncertain areas, like Northern Vietnam and Yunnan, from both atlases will elevate the observations there to genus level, then you can go in and ID them to whatever species they are. This is much easier than IDing all the misidentified C. versicolor -> C. wangi in the obvious areas. You can feel free to go into the atlases of each species and further tweak them, but I think to 'draw the line' isn't necessary for iNat purposes.
looks good to me (not knowing where the line is)
The main reason why the Reptile Database hasn't adopted Calotes farooqi yet is that there is a huge zone of uncertainty in northern India and Nepal which wasn't sampled by Gowande et al. 2021 (Vertebrate Zoology 71 669–696. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.71.e62787), hence we decided to postpone this decision until there is more clarity on the ranges of both species (or maybe there is a large hybrid zone, indicating rather subspecies status).
Thanks for the feedback! I'm not too worried about the issue with C. farooqi, which is why I'm only looking to deal with C. wangi only. I will spend a bit more time to revise the atlases, but I'll make sure that the 'ambiguous areas' are excluded from both C. versicolor and C. wangi, so people can make further revisions. I'm sure when more fine scale studies are done, we can make further changes. I think we have enough evidence to make this taxon change for now.
Agree to proceed with C. wangi first.
@loarie Please help commit the changes. Thanks!
@loarie Just following up on this. Thanks!
committed - thjanks!
@loarie are the observations made in Mauritius concerned by this split ? Thanks
@loarie @tom-kirschey @lwnrngr @omkarsd @uetz
Welcome comments and help with refining this taxon change. I understand that many of these C. versicolor observations could be further split into other spp. like farooqi, irawadi etc., but the goal here is for all the southern Chinese species to be switched over to Calotes wangi. There are many observations in Hong Kong and making this split will save a lot of time. The atlases are not perfect for now, so please feel free to make more changes.