TY - JOUR
T1 - The delusion of stripes
T2 - A century-old mystery of five-lined sun skinks (Reptilia: Scincidae: Eutropis) of Peninsular India elucidated
AU - Amarasinghe, A. A.Thasun
AU - Ganesh, S. R.
AU - Mirza, Zeeshan A.
AU - Campbell, Patrick D.
AU - Pauwels, Olivier S.G.
AU - Schweiger, Silke
AU - Kupfer, Alexander
AU - Patel, Harshil
AU - Karunarathna, Suranjan
AU - Deuti, Kaushik
AU - Ineich, Ivan
AU - Hallermann, Jakob
AU - Abinawanto, A.
AU - Supriatna, Jatna
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank former directors (ZSI), K. Venkataraman and K. Chandra for granting research permission. In particular, we thank K.A. Subramanian and S. Kumar (officer-in-charge, Technical Section, ZSI) for their help throughout the permitting process. P.G.S. Sethy, Sujoy Raha, Probhat Bag, Pankaj Bhatnagar, M.J. Palot, and S. Debnath are acknowledged for assisting while examining collections in ZSI. We thank Frank Tillack (ZMB, Berlin), Christiane Zeitler (SMNS), Ned S. Gilmore (ANSP), and Georg Gassner, Richard Gemel, Karin Ernst, and Alice Schumacher (NMW, Vienna) for loan or measurements/pictures of specimens under their care. The executive chairman and the board of trustees of the Chennai Snake Park Trust, the principal secretary & commissioner of Madras Government Museum (MAD, Chennai), and the director of Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology & Natural History (SACON, Coimbatore) are acknowledged for their support and access to their collections. Singinawa Conservation Foundation is acknowledged for the support. Stephen Mahony (Ireland), Omkar D. Adhikari (BNHS Mumbai), and S.R. Chandramouli are thanked for their inputs and sharing photographs of specimens and Sanjaya Bandara is thanked for proof reading. We also thank David Chapple (Monash University, Melbourne) and Chris Margules (University of Indonesia, Depok and James Cook University, Queensland) for their valuable comments to improve the draft. Finally, we thank Junichi Fujinuma (University of Tartu, Estonia); Anom Bowolaksono and Y. Yasman at the Department of Biology; and the staff of the Research Center for Climate Change, University of Indonesia, for their support.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier GmbH
PY - 2022/1
Y1 - 2022/1
N2 - We re-evaluate the taxonomic identities of five-lined skinks of the genus Eutropis (E. trivittata, E. beddomei, E. nagarjunensis, and E. bibronii) inhabiting the Indian subcontinent. Previously it has been considered that E. trivittata is distributed in the western India and E. dissimilis in the northern India (from north-eastern India up to Pakistan). Based on our analysis, we revealed that the illustration (iconotype) of the untraceable type specimen of E. trivittata depicted by Hardwicke in Gray (1834) from “Dumdum” near Kolkata, West Bengal matches the typical E. dissimilis, also described from “Bengal”. The senior synonym, E. trivittata is a morphologically unique species, which is also supported by divergence in the mitochondrial 12S and 16S regions. E. trivittata is clearly separated with divergences of 5–7% from E. beddomei, E. vertebralis and E. nagarjunensis for 16S rRNA. After placing E. dissimilis with the synonymy of E. trivittata, the taxonomic status of the western Indian ‘E. trivittata’ required to be clarified. Therefore, we resurrect Mabuia vertebralis Boulenger, 1887, a junior synonym of western Indian E. trivittata, and redescribe its holotype collected from “Belgaum”, Karnataka. Although, morphologically closest to E. beddomei, Eutropis vertebralis comb. nov. is a sister taxon to E. nagarjunensis with divergence of 4% in the same mitochondrial regions. Based on our update of the currently confirmed localities for E. vertebralis comb. nov. and E. trivittata, we conducted a Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) using the Maximum Entropy algorithm to predict their distribution range, and we discuss their conservation status.
AB - We re-evaluate the taxonomic identities of five-lined skinks of the genus Eutropis (E. trivittata, E. beddomei, E. nagarjunensis, and E. bibronii) inhabiting the Indian subcontinent. Previously it has been considered that E. trivittata is distributed in the western India and E. dissimilis in the northern India (from north-eastern India up to Pakistan). Based on our analysis, we revealed that the illustration (iconotype) of the untraceable type specimen of E. trivittata depicted by Hardwicke in Gray (1834) from “Dumdum” near Kolkata, West Bengal matches the typical E. dissimilis, also described from “Bengal”. The senior synonym, E. trivittata is a morphologically unique species, which is also supported by divergence in the mitochondrial 12S and 16S regions. E. trivittata is clearly separated with divergences of 5–7% from E. beddomei, E. vertebralis and E. nagarjunensis for 16S rRNA. After placing E. dissimilis with the synonymy of E. trivittata, the taxonomic status of the western Indian ‘E. trivittata’ required to be clarified. Therefore, we resurrect Mabuia vertebralis Boulenger, 1887, a junior synonym of western Indian E. trivittata, and redescribe its holotype collected from “Belgaum”, Karnataka. Although, morphologically closest to E. beddomei, Eutropis vertebralis comb. nov. is a sister taxon to E. nagarjunensis with divergence of 4% in the same mitochondrial regions. Based on our update of the currently confirmed localities for E. vertebralis comb. nov. and E. trivittata, we conducted a Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) using the Maximum Entropy algorithm to predict their distribution range, and we discuss their conservation status.
KW - Holotype
KW - Iconotype
KW - Morphometric
KW - Neotype
KW - Resurrection
KW - Synonymy
KW - Systematics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121219862&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jcz.2021.11.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jcz.2021.11.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85121219862
SN - 0044-5231
VL - 296
SP - 71
EP - 90
JO - Zoologischer Anzeiger
JF - Zoologischer Anzeiger
ER -