Talk:Chaco tortoise

Species Status

@Nicksamphibians: I have a bit of an issue with the Species Status section it would seem to be misleading. These taxa mentioned have all been formally synonimised (Fritz et al. 2012) and that has been accepted (Rhodin et al, 2012; van Dyke et al. 2014). Melissa's website is not an adequate citation to be viewed as contrary to full molecular analysis published in peer review with two follow up reviews also accepting the results. I have no problem with a statement along the lines of "historically these have been viewed as separate taxa, with little work done to confirm or deny it" followed up by a statement that "subsequent molecular analysis has found little to no genetic variation" and by reading the papers eg, Rhodin et al, 2012, you will see that the morphological variation is explanable as a factor of elevation. So basically I have cited 3 peer reviewed papers here in my comment on your changes, do remember that a general website is not a good resource. I will list the papers below so you can cite them.

• Fritz, U., Alcalde, L., Ramírez-Vargas, M., Goode, E.V., Fabius-Turoblin, D.U., and Praschag, P. 2012a. Northern genetic richness and southern purity, but just one species in the Chelonoidis chilensis complex. Zoologica Scripta 41:220–232. Download
• Rhodin, Anders G.J.; van Dijk, Peter Paul; Inverson, John B.; Shaffer, H. Bradley; Roger, Bour (2012-12-31). "Turtles of the world, 2012 update: Annotated checklist of taxonomy, synonymy, distribution and conservation status". Chelonian Research Monographs 5: 000.xx. doi:10.3854/crm.5.000.checklist.v5.2012 Download
• Turtle Taxonomy Working Group (van Dijk PP, Iverson JB, Rhodin AGJ, Shaffer HB, Bour R). 2014. Turtles of the world, 7th edition: annotated checklist of taxonomy, synonymy, distribution with maps, and conservation status. Download

cheers, Faendalimas ^talk 18:55, 10 August 2015 (UTC)