New sub species?

[edwardbo]

Is it me or are there more and more interesting box turtle intergrades popping up all over ? So many postings on this and other sites with peps asking what type they have ..are we watching new sub species evolving right before our eyes ?

 

[MichaelaW]

I think not so much a new subspecies, but just the fact that realistically, subspecies will and do sometimes overlap and will produce hybrids. Also in the Eastern box turtle, coloration is incredibly diverse, which may lead to some incorrect assumptions.

 

[PJay]

The internet drives some interest. When I first got interested in box turtles, some twenty five years ago, all we had for reference were a couple small, short lived, publications for information. We were limited to what the publisher wanted to show us.

Now we can google a species name and get articles and PICTURES! galore with physical descriptions and natural ranges. People try to identify which species they have and find characteristics of multiple species in one specimin (intergrade). Intergrades are and always have been in existence along the range borders. There really aren't any borders, just localized versions of dominant genetic archetypes surrounded by hybrids of the same.

There is also a large degree of interest in designer reptiles these days. Google ball python and try to absorb all the different morphs people are working with. The scale of genetic variations is really amazing. I like that, but I really like that with the box turtles people are finding, all the genetic variations are naturally derived.

Box turtles are awesome!

 

[lisa127]

Integrades have always happened where ranges overlap. And of course they will look a little different. My integrade does not "look" like a 3 toed nor a gulf coast.

 

[mark1]

Populations, Species, and Evolution
E Mayr - 1970

“This concept of the subspecies is fallacious. Species are not composites of uniform subtypes-subspecies-but consist of an almost infinite number of local populations, each in turn (in sexual species) consisting of genetically different individuals... The better the geographic variation of a species is known, the more difficult it becomes to delimit subspecies and the more obvious it becomes that many such delimitations are quite arbitrary.”

 

[MichaelaW]

Populations, Species, and Evolution
E Mayr - 1970

“This concept of the subspecies is fallacious. Species are not composites of uniform subtypes-subspecies-but consist of an almost infinite number of local populations, each in turn (in sexual species) consisting of genetically different individuals... The better the geographic variation of a species is known, the more difficult it becomes to delimit subspecies and the more obvious it becomes that many such delimitations are quite arbitrary.”

Very well said.