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New Snake Species in the UK? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter davewalters
- Start date
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!
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Perhaps a little unfair when we seem to have been handed a decent visible morphological difference to work on!
Off to check my pix too.....
John
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
I was roundly criticised when I made a similar statement re birds so be careful!
'Apparent genetic divergence' is only pivotal to the biological species concept but not the phylogenetic species concept which takes a much more holistic view of what a species is.
A
StuartReeves
Local rarity
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.
Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
Perhaps the snake shown isn't British and the intensity of the yellow collar varies regionally or it could be a snake with faded colours which is ready to shed?
It also looks to be quite a big snake as Grass Snakes go and as with many animals, the bigger they are, the less bright they are, look at King Cobra for example?
A
John Cantelo
Well-known member
This seems to be the original paper - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-07847-9
Bismarck Honeyeater
Barely known member
So a bit of sloppy journalism from the BBC then.
Not a fourth species for Britain, just a renaming of the one we've always had. Presumably 'Western' Grass Snake as opposed to Grass Snake
It does appear to be a balls up - well, there *is* a new species but they overlap in Germany not here so we still have the 3 species, but our grass snake is the barred grass snake now.
You'd have thought the BBC and others would have the decency to correct it rather than just let it slip and hope no-one notices. 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. From googling no news sources appears to be clarifying the situation.
You'd have thought the BBC and others would have the decency to correct it rather than just let it slip and hope no-one notices. 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. From googling no news sources appears to be clarifying the situation.
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.
The reporting of this research has been appalling - even BBC Springwatch was retweeting the "news". Complete and utter laziness of behalf of "journalists". I saw the BBC item tweeted, read it, and could see no reference to the research but it took about 5 minutes of googling to realise that the article (and others in MSM) was rubbish.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
I'm confused about the identification features now, most of our (Barred) Grass Snakes have collars, the odd one doesn't: the ground colour is variable as hell from blackish through olives, greens, and brown tones. The bars also seem to me from my own photos to be variable. Is the snake in the article's photograph the odd one out?
John
Pic: Grass Snake cock-up
John
Pic: Grass Snake cock-up
Attachments
Yes maybe you're right. But surely people have written, tweeted etc to correct this? Many have on the twitter feed so the penny must have dropped surely?
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Trouble is, BBC are probably so used to people trolling their reports that they just automatically ignore any incoming corrections.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Tell Mr Packham then, his OCD won't let him leave it uncorrected. I can't see the BBC ignoring him.
John
