Thought you guys would be interested in this - Our paper on the placement of
Gonyophis margaritatus (Rainbow tree snake) was published today in the journal Zootaxa.
For those not in the know, this is an extremely rare but gorgeous snake species distributed in SE Asia (pictures below), and we were absolutely delighted to be able to finally generate genetic data for this species.
The paper explores the phylogenetic relationships between these taxa, spelling out the taxonomic problem that now occurs by placing Gonyophis, and the three possible taxonomic solutions that present themselves from our findings. We hope to convince you, in light of this new development, that the best current hypothesis for the closely related
Gonyosoma/Gonyophis/Rhadinophis/Rhynchophis group is to use the generic name
Gonyosoma for each species.
I've attached some photos of this species which I gathered from the interwebs (the first I can't find an original source on, the second is here:
http://www.fieldherpforum.com/forum/...hp?f=2&t=19134)
The species is so rarely encountered that there are less than 10 preserved specimens in museums. Our coauthors from the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies at Kyoto University found the animal and luckily had the foresight to take a tissue sample. There is also a picture of the individual (which was released unharmed) in the full version of the paper. Preserving specimens in formalin screws up DNA, so unfortunately we aren't able to use museum specimens for genetic research.
Preview here:
http://mapress.com/zootaxa/2014/f/z03881p548f.pdf
I apologize for the pay wall but I can't legally send the full version publicly.
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