A new species of Grass Snake has been recognised as a distinct subspecies. The Barred Grass Snake(Natrix Helvetica) can be indentified by being greyer in colour than the Grass Snake(Natrix Natrix) and lacking the bright yellow collar from the normal species.The dark band markings are more pronounced on the Barred Grass Snake.Both species are widespread throughout the United Kingdom. There have been articles produced recently about this new discovery.
Somewhat contradictory statement there care to share your sources? Moreover, if you are stating that the subspecies N. n. helvetica - which is native to the UK and Western Europe - has been promoted to full species level, your statement that the nominate rate is also widespread in the UK is incorrect; this race is found in Central Europe and the Balkans.
Hybridization patterns in two contact zones of grass snakes reveal a new Central European snake species It's been re-classified from subspecies to full species status, Komodo99...
I mentioned articles in my original post,So far only the BBC,Metro and other news sources have been uploading coverage.
Saying "there have been articles produced recently about this new discovery" isn't the same as actually mentioning or linking to the articles Cheers, Batto as I noted above, this article establishes that only one taxon - helvetica - is native to the United Kingdom, with genetic data indicating a small handful of introduced individuals from the Greek lineage - persa - are present in Sussex. As such the statement in the original post that both Grass Snake species are widespread in the UK is inaccurate.
I am realy interested whether the snake species in the Balkans, and particularly in the south-central Balkans can be split into more species. Like, can the green montepeliar snakes - sometimes with a colour like a Jameson's mamba, with yellow abdominal scales, can be classified as a separate species from the brown specimens of the Malpolon monspessulanus, or whether the population of Vipera ammodytes in R. Macedonia is belonging to meridionalis or ammodytes subspecies, or they are both present in the country and if yes, they are probably hybridizing.
Every single article I have seen on the discovery has made the same, entirely incorrect, claim. While we can't expect journalists to be well-versed in the details of genetics and species splitting, it is vexing when they make entirely inaccurate claims that then get repeated.
Oh, well. The taxonomy of the grass snake is moving forvard. Again the former subspecies recieved a full species status, as it happened with many other widely distributed polytypic and polymorphic species. Earlier in 2016 the Iberian grass snake has been elevated to the full species, Natrix astreptophora (see Pokrant et al., 2016). Previous large changes in Natrix taxonomy concerned the problematic status of the Big-headed grass snake (N. megalocephala). As result most (but not all!) specialists concluded that "N. megalocephala" is not valid species, but a melanistic morph of N. natrix. Montpellier snakes exhibits strong sexual dimorphism in size and colouration. The greenish snakes with yellow bellies are males, and the spotted brownish ones with white bellies are females and juveniles. The problem with Vipera ammodytes is that the current taxonomy of this species is controversial and has been based on morphological characters only and almost lacking support from molecular phylogeny studies. The last large study of V. ammodytes systematics to my knowledge is Tomović L. (2006) Systematics of nose-horned Viper (Vipera ammodytes, Linnaeus, 1758). According to this study the most part of Macedonia is occupied by Vipera ammodytes montandoni, while small northern-western part of the country lies in the transition zone between V. a. montandoni and V. a. ammodytes. The same was indicated in 2013 study of the distribution of the genus Vipera in the western and central Balkans. It is not surprising because Liljana Tomović is one of the authors However, in the study of molecular phylogeoraphy (Ursenbacher et al., 2007) the single sample from Macedonia falls into southern subclade (of the southern-eastern clade) together with several samples from Greece. Authors define these samples as V. a. meridionalis according to literature that they use.
Once I read that different subspecies have different number of enzymes or proteins in the venom, for example one subspecies venom containing 106 and that from another 116.
Yes, you are right. And here is the reference: Georgieva et al. 2008. V. a. ammodytes shows larger diversity of venom proteins than V. a. meridionalis. Unfortunately, the authors do not indicate how they determined that sampled snakes belongs to certain subspecies. Also there is no taxonomic researches in the list of used literature. Eight snakes were from southern Bulgaria and another eight from northwest Bulgaria. And I forgot to say, that montpellier snakes from Southeastern Europe now sometimes considered to be a distinct species Malpolon insignitus (former insignitus and fuscus subspecies of M. monspessulanus, see Carranza et al. 2006).
It may be just me, but I have a hard time finding out what grass snake (sub)species live in mainland Italy. Are they too included in helvetica? (I'm only interested in N. natrix and recent splits, not in other Natrix species.)
The most recent issue of Practical Reptile Keeping magazine has an article about the new grass snake - the ones in Italy are indeed included in Natrix helvetica.
