arnoldi

They now suggested the presence of six species: D. dussumieri from Aldabra, D. hololissa and D. arnoldi from the Seychelles, D. daudinii (probably) from the Seychelles, and D. abrupta and D. grandidieri from Madagascar.

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006

Or does it mean that D. arnoldi and D. hololissa were never good species at all, but that they just represent ecomorphs of D. dussumieri?

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006

Excepting D. arnoldi Bour, 1982, all of these names are old, so the species recognised by Gerlach & Canning (1998a, b) have been resurrected from synonymy and are not 'new' species in the strictest sense of the term.

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006

In other words, D. dussumieri individuals introduced to the Seychelles may conceivably have swamped the mtDNA haplotypes of D. arnoldi and D. hololissa, even though the unique Seychelles morphology could persist.

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006

In 1982, Roger Bour proposed that four museum specimens from the Seychelles represented a new species which he named D. arnoldi (Bour 1982).

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006

Alleged D. arnoldi and D. hololissa specimens have now been identified at zoos and wildlife parks in Mauritius, the Seychelles, Kansas, Michigan, Hawaii and the UK.

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006

The most famous native species are the giant land tortoise (Dipsochelys arnoldi on the granitic Seychelles and Dipsochelys dussumieri on Aldabra).

Granitic Seychelles forests 2008

Genetic data from fossils would help clear up the picture, as would convincing evidence that the living individuals identified as D. arnoldi and D. hololissa really do represent exactly the same thing as the museum specimens that bear these names.

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006

Gerlach & Canning explained how morphological examination and application of randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis (RAPDs) supported the idea that both D. arnoldi and D. hololissa were still extant in captivity.

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006

This would mean that the morphological criteria on which extant supposed D. arnoldi and D. hololissa have been identified are utterly unreliable: an idea which matches suggestions that 'carapace morphology is sensitive to environmental conditions and that captivity can result in aberrant morphologies' (Palkovacs et al. 2003, p. 1409; see also Gerlach 2004b).

Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006