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In his review of the book Freshwater Turtles of Australia (hereafterFTA), ArthurGeorgesmade the concluding comments that, while the bookwas a ‘beautifully illustrated and spectacular expose of the diversity and form of the unusual turtle fauna of Australia’ and ‘an interesting read’, it was not the reference book for researchers, academics and herpetologists as described by CSIRO Publishing, and that as a ‘scientific resource for researchers, academics and herpetologists, . . . a poor example to follow’. Preceding this, Georges presents several criticisms, a major point of contention being his belief that one of the primary purposes of the book was to ‘reshape the scientific classification of those turtles, through a taxonomic reevaluation’, one he was disappointed with. Georges is correct in that the primary purpose of the book was as an exposé of the Australian turtle fauna. The book was never intended as a major scientific resource; rather, it was meant to provide a platform to present the diversity of Australian turtles, and to provide direction for interested readers, by way of the numerous references cited, to further investigate their biology. There was no intention to ‘reshape the scientific classification of . . . turtles’ as suggested by Georges; rather, we were required to make decisions to arrive at a taxonomy we believe best reflected the diversity and form of Australian turtles and on a nomenclature that fell within the bounds of best practice. For some taxa this did not necessarily agree with the classification proposed by others. We faced two issues in arriving at a suitable taxonomy. One was to evaluate incongruities in the level of discrimination provided by genetic and morphological data for some taxa. The other, the application of an appropriate nomenclature to the taxonomy, we chose to adopt. In his review, Georges criticises the taxonomic hierarchy we use, the way that taxonomy was presented and the nomenclature applied to that taxonomy. A large part of Georges’ review is spent highlighting cases of our apparent misinterpretation of genetic data in its application to the taxonomic decisions made in FTA. Neither of us (Cann or Sadlier) are skilled geneticists, and only used the information presented to us at its face value. Georges states we disagree with application of allozyme electrophoresis for delimiting species boundaries and that we denigrate good science in our assessment of his allozyme data.We have no issue with the quality of the allozyme studies as implied by Georges; rather, we have only questioned its limitations in identifying biological entities (taxa) in some groups of turtles, where these show some degree of morphological differentiation but only limited genetic differentiation. We provide a limited response (due to space limitations) to specific (bold) comments made in Georges’ review, and encourage the reader to refer also to the text in FTA in judging whether we have erred to warrant the criticism levelled.

Response to Arthur Georges’ review of Freshwater Turtles of Australia (2017)