Very interesting indeed, thanks for sharing. I thought it was going to be the BBC playing catch up with reporting on the London & Welsh colonies of aesculapian snakes centred on zoo sites where they’ve escaped from.
I’ll be going through my grass snake photos to see if I have any contenders. That said, it brings it all home just how arbitrary the whole species concept is. Time after time there are studies where new species are suggested due to apparent genetic divergence. Can’t help thinking there are geneticists & taxonomists perhaps eager to enhance their CV and ‘name a new species’. Eventually we get to a point where genitals have to be dissected or DNA tested to firmly establish an identification of some obscure cryptic species.
Or maybe I’m just a bit cynical!
Apparently it's a balls-up. There is a proposed split but we only have one form here in the UK.
I’ll be going through my grass snake photos to see if I have any contenders. That said, it brings it all home just how arbitrary the whole species concept is. Time after time there are studies where new species are suggested due to apparent genetic divergence. Can’t help thinking there are geneticists & taxonomists perhaps eager to enhance their CV and ‘name a new species’. Eventually we get to a point where genitals have to be dissected or DNA tested to firmly establish an identification of some obscure cryptic species.
Or maybe I’m just a bit cynical!
This article is closer to the original source. It seems that the British animals are Natrix helvetica though, confusingly, the picture shows helvetica as lacking a yellow collar but I've never seen a grass snake without a yellow collar.
This seems to be the original paper - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-07847-9
I don't think they do know they've screwed up. The Springwatch twitter account put the story out again today, uncorrected.It is obvious that they know they screwed up as I'm sure it would have made a little feature on the TV news last night.
I don't think they do know they've screwed up. The Springwatch twitter account put the story out again today, uncorrected.
If anyone knows of a population of Natrix natrix in the UK (there are rumoured to be some that derive from escapes), it would probably be best to keep quiet about them, as they're suddenly a non-native species.
But surely people have written, tweeted etc to correct this? Many have on the twitter feed so the penny must have dropped surely?
Trouble is, BBC are probably so used to people trolling their reports that they just automatically ignore any incoming corrections.