In the wake of all these changes and additions, it
seemed both an interesting and necessary exercise to
review the relationships within the V. prasinus group.
The natural distribution area of all members of this
complex is limited to New Guinea and the surrounding
islands (the only exception being V. keithhornei, which
is located on the mainland of Australia), so it is entirely
reasonable to suspect that genetic studies would be
valuable to cast some light upon the respective
phylogeny.
‘All species are very similar
and differ almost only
in colour.’
Indeed, since all species are phenotypically very similar
and differ (almost) only in colour, Ziegler et al (2007)
sought further evidence based on a DNA analysis.
Unfortunately, not all the described taxa were available
to them at that time. Several years ago now, a larger
number of animals were confiscated by German
Customs, so we took the opportunity to obtain blood
samples from them all. The species were determined
according to purely external characteristics, DNA was
extracted from the blood samples and then was
subsequently sequenced (Eidenmüller et al, 2017). In
order to be able to incorporate the results of the
previous study (Ziegler et al, 2007) into this new
analysis, the same DNA fragment was sequenced and
evaluated. Unfortunately, no usable DNA could be
extracted from the type specimen of V. telenesetes.
Above: V. kordensis.
Left: V. beccarii.
These were noted by
Mertens in 1942 as
the sole known
subspecies of
V. prasinus, but have
since been raised to
species status.
All images courtesy
of Bernd Eidenmüller
unless otherwise
noted.