Heads up: Some or all of the identifications affected by this split may have been replaced with identifications of 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 08-19-2024)

Split off all southern China provinces into C. wangi, as many of them are misidentified as C. versicolor. Updated based on Huang et al. (2023). Finer scale research would help with making atlases for other Calotes, allowing splits from C. versicolor.

Taxonomic review of the Calotes ver... (Citation)
Added by cosmophasis on July 15, 2024 07:14 AM | Committed by loarie on August 19, 2024
split into

Comments

@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.

Posted by cosmophasis 3 months ago

The main question is where to draw the line between C. wangi and C. versicolor s. str. in Northern Vietnam and Yunnan Province.

Posted by tom-kirschey 3 months ago

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.

Posted by cosmophasis 3 months ago

looks good to me (not knowing where the line is)

Posted by loarie 3 months ago

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).

Posted by uetz 3 months ago

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.

Posted by cosmophasis 3 months ago

Agree to proceed with C. wangi first.

Posted by tom-kirschey 3 months ago

@loarie Please help commit the changes. Thanks!

Posted by cosmophasis 3 months ago

@loarie Just following up on this. Thanks!

Posted by cosmophasis about 2 months ago

committed - thjanks!

Posted by loarie about 2 months ago

@loarie are the observations made in Mauritius concerned by this split ? Thanks

Posted by jeanclaude about 2 months ago

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