Mitochondrial DNA analysis reveals a new member of the Asian pitviper genus Viridovipera (Serpentes: Viperidae: Crotalinae).

In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: Pitvipers of the former Trimeresurus group occur throughout southern and South East Asia. Extraordinary morphological conser-vativeness has been observed between many of these species (eg Malhotra and Thorpe, 2000; Malhotra and Thorpe, 2004a; Sanders et al., 2006) and determining the systematic relationships within this group has proven to be extremely difficult, amplified by ongoing morphological and molecular studies continuing to reveal previously unknown diversity. Recent genetic studies involving high levels of sampling across all Asian pitvipers have led to radical reorganisation of genera and revealed many historically misa-ligned species (eg Tu et al., 2000; Malhotra and Thorpe, 2000, 2004b). External morphology has proven misleading in many cases. Sanders et al. (2004) used a combination of genetic and morphological methods to demonstrate between-clade ecological convergence of traits previously treated as phylogenetically informative in the genus Parias. Genetic studies are thus invaluable in resolving the taxonomic relationships in these animals, though this can leave some difficult-to-sample taxa in uncertain taxo-nomic positions. This study seeks to elucidate the taxonomic position of ''Tri-meresurus " truongsonensis, a recently discovered species of pitviper from the karst region of central Vietnam (Orlov et al., 2004). This species is currently known only from the type locality, Phong Nha—Ke Bang National Park, and adjacent communes within Quang Binh province (Ziegler et al., 2006). The original description by Orlov et al. (2004) was based on a type series consisting of males only, and Ziegler et al. (2006) provided for the first time the description of an adult female. The type specimen of this species was initially referred to Cryptelytrops kanburiensis on the basis of its superficial resemblance to both Cryptelytrops kanburiensis and C. venustus, with which it shares a banded coloration, similar body proportions and scalation characters as well as habitat type (Orlov et al., 2004). However, it has repeatedly been demonstrated that general morphological resemblance is not a reliable method of generic allocation in pitvipers. For example, several species assigned to Ovophis (Burger, 1971; Hoge and Romano-Hoge, 1981) on the basis of morphological and ecological similarity were later revealed by genetic analysis to render the genus paraphyletic (Mal-hotra and Thorpe, 2000; Tu et al., 2000; Malhotra and Thorpe, 2004b). …