Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription or Fee Access

Shield-Head Vipers (dinniki) Complex of the Central and Eastern Caucasus

Boris S. Tuniyev, T. V. Petrova, K. Yu. Lotiev, G. N. Iremashvili, A. A. Kruglikova

Abstract


The study of Pelias dinniki in the high-mountainous areas of both macro-slopes of the Greater Caucasus over several decades has revealed significant differences in alternative parts of this region. This refers to the mean values of a number of plastic and meristic characters, pattern and coloration of snakes from the Central and Eastern Caucasus, to western Dagestan and East Georgia on the one hand, and eastern Dagestan on the other, in comparison with western populations of Pelias dinniki from Krasnodar territory, Adygea, Abkhazia, West Georgia and western Karachay-Cherkessia Republic. Geographical and gender groups were also revealed using the discriminant analysis. Cluster analysis overall set of pholidosis characters showed distancing between P. dinniki sensu stricto and other forms of (dinniki) complex. According to mitochondrial cytochrome b analysis, vipers from the Central-Eastern Caucasus, as well as from eastern Dagestan form distinct evolutionary lineage with high support. Based on morphological, molecular differences and peculiarities of ecology, animals from the Central-Eastern Caucasus and eastern Dagestan, in our opinion, should be considered as a distinct species. The vipers from the Central and Eastern Caucasus (up to western Dagestan and East Georgia in the east) are named after the place of records in the upper flow of the Fiagdon River valley in Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. Among the representatives of the (dinniki) complex, the new species is distinguished by the combination of morphological characters and color pattern. It is distributed in the highlands of both slopes of the Greater Caucasus: on the northern slope from the east of Karachay-Cherkessia Republic to the west of the Republic of Dagestan and East Georgia; on the southern slope from South Ossetia to East Georgia. Viper biotopes are represented by subalpine and alpine meadows, more xerophyte in comparison with P. dinniki habitats. Vipers from eastern Dagestan are named after the highlands of Dagestan. They differ by smaller size and shape of head as well as color pattern and pholidosis characters. The species is distributed in the range of altitudes from 2400 to 3000 m on Guton Mountain and around it in Tlyaratinsky and Rutulsky districts of Dagestan. Biotopes of vipers are represented by typical subalpine, short grass pastoral subalpine and alpine meadows.

Keywords


Greater Caucasus; new species; Pelias fiagdonica; P. dagestanica; viperid snake

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ananjeva N. B. (2019), “Current state of the problems in the phylogeny of squamate reptiles (Squamata, Reptilia),” Biol. Bull., 9(2), 119 – 128.

Ananjeva N. B., Gabaev V. N., Iremashvili G. N., Lotiev K. Yu., and Petrova T. V. (2021), “The taxonomic status of the vipers of the Pelias (kaznakovi) complex in the mid dle-flow of the Kura River basin in the East Transcaucasia,” Proc. Zool. Inst. RAS, 325(1), 3 – 33.

Arribas O., Candan K., Kurnaz M., Kumlutaş Yu., Caynak E. Y., and Ilgaz Ç. (2022), “A new cryptic species of the Darevskia parvula group from NE Anatolia (Squamata, Lacertidae),” Organisms Divers. Evol., 22, 475–490. DOI: 10.1007/s13127-022-00540-4

Bandelt H., Forster P., and Röhl A. (1999), “Median-joining networks for inferring intraspecific phylogenies,” Mol. Biol. Evol., 16(1), 37 – 48.

Bekoshvili D. and Doronin I. (2015), “New data on the distribution of snakes in Georgia (Caucasus),” Herpetol. Rev., 46(3), 388 – 390.

Darriba D., Taboada G. L., Doallo R., and Posada D. (2012), “jModelTest 2: more models, new heuristics and parallel computing,” Nat. Meth., 9, 772.

Doniol-Valcroze P., Ursenbacher S., Mebert K., Ghielmi S., Laddaga L., Sourrouille P., Kariş M., and Crochet P.-A. (2021), “Conflicting relationships of Vipera walser inferred from nuclear genes sequences and mitochondrial DNA,” J. Zool. Syst. Evol. Res., 59(8), 2307 – 2320. DOI: 10.1111/jzs.12543

Dubey S., Zwahlen V., Mebert K., Monney J.-C., Golay Ph., Ott T., Durand T., Thiery G., Kaiser L., Geser S., and Ursenbacher S. (2015), “Diversifying selection and color-biased dispersal in the asp viper,” Evol. Biol., 15, 99. DOI: 10.1186/s12862-015-0367-4

Dufresnes C., Ghielmi S., Halpern B., Martínez-Freiría F., Mebert K., Jelić D., Crnobrnja-Isailović J., Gippner S., Jablonski D., Joger U., Laddaga L., Petrovan S., Tomović L., Vörös J., İğci N., Kariş M., Zinenko O., and Ursenbacher S. (2024), “Phylogenomic insights into the diversity and evolution of Palearctic vipers,” Mol. Phylogen. Evol., 197, Art. 108095 DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2024.108095

Freitas I., Ursenbacher S., Mebert K., Zinenko O., Schweiger S., Wüster W., Brito J. C., Crnobrnja-Isailović J., Halpern B., Fahd S., Santos X., Pleguezuelos J. M., Joger U., Orlov N., Mizsei E., Lourdais O., Zuffi M. A. L., Strugariu A., Zamfirescu S. R., Martínez-Solano I, Velo- Antón G., Kaliontzopoulou A., and Martínez-Freiría F. (2020), “Evaluating taxonomic inflation: towards evidence-based species delimitation in Eurasian vipers (Serpentes: Viperinae),” Amphibia–Reptilia, 41(3), 285 – 311. DOI: 10.1163/15685381-bja10007

Gvozdetsky N. A. (1958), Physical Geography of the Caucasus. Vol. 2(2), Izd. MGU, Moscow [in Russian].

Hall T. A. (1999), “BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT,” Nucl. Acids Symp. Ser., 41, 95 – 98.

Iankoshvili G. and Tarkhnishvili D. (2021), “Distribution of snakes (Reptilia: Serpentes) in Georgia: Social media networks help to improve scientific knowledge,” Zool. Middle East, 67(3), 228 – 239. DOI: 10.1080/09397140.2021.1957208

Jablonski D., Kukushkin O. V., Avci A., Bunyatova S., Kumlutaş Y., Ilgaz C., Polyakova E., Shiryaev K., Tuniyev B., and Jandzik D. (2019), “The biogeography of Elaphe sauromates (Pallas, 1814), with a description of a new rat snake species,” PeerJ, 7, 6944.

Jobb G. (2011), TREEFINDER. Version of March, 2011, München, http://www.treefinder.de.

Kumar S., Stecher G., and Tamura K. (2016), “MEGA7: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis version 7.0 for bigger datasets,” Mol. Biol. Evol., 33(7), 1870 – 1874.

Kurnaz M. (2020), “Species list of Amphibians and Reptiles from Turkey,” J. Animal Divers., 2(4), 10 – 32. DOI: 10.29252/jad.2020.2.4.2

Lakin G. F. (1980), Biometry, Vysshaya Shkola, Moscow [in Russian].

Nilson G., Tuniyev B. S., Orlov N. L., Hoggren M., and Andrén C. (1995), “Systematics of the Vipers of the Caucasus: Polymorphism or Sibling Species?” Asiatic Herpetol. Res., 6, 1 – 26.

Nilson G. and Andrén C. (2001), “The meadow and steppe vipers of Europe and Asia — the Vipera (Acridophaga) ursinii complex,” Acta Zool., 47(2 – 3), 87 – 267.

Miller S. A., Dykes D. D., and Polesky H. F. (1988), “A simple salting out procedure for extracting DNA from human nucleated cells,” Nucl. Acids Res., 16(3), 1215. DOI: 1093/nar/16.3.1215

Muskhelishvili T. M. (1959), “On the batracho-herpetological fauna of Svaneti,” Soobsh. AN GruzSSR, 22(6), 729 – 731 [in Russian].

Orlov N. L. and Tuniyev B. S. (1986), “Contemporary ranges, possible ways of their formation and phylogeny of three viper species of the Euro-Siberian group of the Vipera kaznakowi complex in the Caucasus,” Tr. Zool. Inst. AN SSSR, 157, 107 – 135 [in Russian].

Pavlinov I. Ya. (2014), “Review of the book ‘Modern problems of biological taxonomy,” Zh. Obshch. Biol., 75(2), 144 – 148 [in Russian].

Pizzigalli C., Banefi F., Ficetola G. F., Falaschi M., Mangiacotti M., Sacchi R., Zuffi M. A. L., and Scali S. (2020), “Eco-geographical determinants of the evolution of ornamentation in vipers,” Biol. J. Lin. Soc., 20, 1 – 15.

Ronquist F., Teslenko M., Van der Mark P., Ayres D. L., Darling A., Höhna S., Larget B., Liu L., Suchard M. A., and Huelsenbeck J. P. (2012), “MrBayes 3.2: efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space,” Syst. Biol., 61(3), 539 – 542.

Schmid P. L., Grünewald J., Gloor R., Francioli Ya., Tisza Á., Mizsei E., and Mebert K. (2023), “First illustrated record of melanism in Dinnik’s Viper, Vipera dinniki Nikolsky, 1913 in Georgia,” Herpetol. Notes, 16, 87 – 89.

Speybroeck J., Beukema W., Dufresnes Ch., Fritz U., Jablonski D., Lymberakis P., Martínez-Solano I., Razzetti E., Vamberger M., Vences M., Vörös J., and Crochet P.-A. (2020), “Species list of the European herpetofauna — 2020 update by the Taxonomic Committee of the Societass Europaea Herpetologica,” Amphibia–Reptilia, 41(2), 139 – 181. DOI: 10.1163/15685381-bja10010

Stümpel N. (2012), Phylogenie und Phylogeographie eurasischer Viperinae unter besonderer Berück-sichtigung der orientalischen Vipern der Gattungen Montivipera und Macrovipera. Fakultät für Lebenswissenschaften der Technischen Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig, https://publikationsserver.tu-braunschweig.de/receive/ dbbs_mods_00043181

Thompson J. D., Higgins D. G., Gibson and T. J. (1994), “CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice,” Nucl. Acids Res., 22, 4673 – 4680.

Tuniyev B. S. (2016), “Rare species of shield-head vipers in the Caucasus,” Nat. Conserv. Res., 1(3), 11 – 25.

Tuniyev B. S., Avcı A., Ilgaz Ç., Olgun K., Petrova T. V., Bodrov S. Yu., Geniez P., and Teynié A. (2018), “On taxonomical status of shield-head vipers from Turkish Lesser Caucasus and east Anatolia,” Proc. Zool. Inst. RAS, 322(1), 3 – 44.

Tuniyev B. S., Orlov N. L., Ananjeva N. B., and Aghasyan A. L. (2019), Snakes of the Caucasus: Taxonomic Diversity, Distribution, Conservation, KMK Scientific Press, St. Petersburg – Moscow.

Tyurin V. V., Morev I. A., and Volchkov V. A. (2003), Linear Discriminant Analysis in Selection of Genetic Research, Krasnodar. [in Russian].

Vedmederya V. I. (1984), “Distribution, variability and features of the ecology of the Caucasian viper,” Species and Its Productivity in the Area. Vol. 5, Sverdlovsk, pp. 8 – 9 [in Russian].

Vedmederya V. I., Orlov N. L., and Tuniyev B. S. (1986), “On systematics of vipers of the Vipera kaznakowi complex,” Tr. Zool. Inst. AN SSSR, 157, 55 – 61 [in Russian].

Zinenko O., Stümpel N., Mazanaeva L., Bakiev A., Shiryaev K., Pavlov A., Kotenko T., Kukushkin O., Chikin Y., Duisebayeva T., Nilson G., Orlov N. L., Tuniyev S., Ananjeva N. B., Murphy R. W., and Joger U. (2015), “Mitochondrial phylogeny shows multiple independent ecological transitions and northern dispersion despite of Pleistocene glaciations in meadow and steppe vipers (Vipera ursinii and Vipera renardi),” Mol. Phylogen. Evol., 84, 85 – 100.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.30906/1026-2296-2025-32-2-108-137

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


You can subscribe to the print or electronic version of the journal on the site of EastView Company. If you have any questions, please write to the email sales@ivis.ru