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Phylogeny of the vipers of the Caucasus (Reptilia, Viperidae)
Author(s) -
NILSON GÖRAN,
HÖGGREN MATS,
TUNIYEV BORIS S.,
ORLOV NIKOLAI L.,
ANDREN CLAES
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
zoologica scripta
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.204
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1463-6409
pISSN - 0300-3256
DOI - 10.1111/j.1463-6409.1994.tb00393.x
Subject(s) - cladogram , biology , taxon , viperidae , phylogenetic tree , cladistics , zoology , evolutionary biology , phylogenetics , taxonomy (biology) , ecology , genetics , gene , venom
Phylogenetic relationships for five taxa of Palearctic vipers (genus Vipera ) from the Caucasian region were revealed by cladistic analyses of separate and combined morphological and biochemical characters. The different data sets yielded largely congruent cladograms. Vipera berus from Sweden was included as an ingroup and V. aspis was used for outgroup comparison. For V. kaznakovi and V. dinniki , three and four different sub‐populations, respectively, were treated as independent terminal taxa in the analyses. The most parsimonious cladograms confirmed the systematic positions of these populations, discussed in a recent study, and support the hypothesis that the montane populations of the western main Caucasus comprise one polymorphie species: V. dinniki. Analyses of combined biochemical and morphological data generated two equally parsimonious cladograms (for all ingroups compared), but yielded only one fully resolved topology when ingroups were condensed to the species level: ( berus ((renardi (‘ursinii’‐eriwanensis )))( dinnikikaznakovi )).