Mauremys pritchardi
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| Mauremys pritchardi | ||||||||||||||
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| "Mauremys" × pritchardi (McCord, 1997) |
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Mauremys pritchardi McCord, 1997 |
"Mauremys" × pritchardi is an intergeneric hybrid turtle in the Geoemydidae family. It was described to be from Myanmar (where neither of the parental species occurs apparently) and has been found in the wild in China and Japan and is produced to some extent in chinese turtle farms. It was listed as data deficient in the IUCN Red List before its actual origin became known.
The parents of this hybrid are the Chinese Pond Turtle and the Asian Yellow Pond Turtle. While it is not unusual for perfectly valid geoemydid species to arise from hybridization, recognition as a species would require that the hybrids are fertile and constitute a phenotypically distinct and self-sustaining lineage. This does yet appear to be the case in this "species" as recently (Kosukawa et al. 2006)a population of these turtles has been found in Japan. The hybrid offspring is perfectly fertile, which is not the case in Mauremys iversoni for example, another intergeneric hybrid, and has been bred in F2 already, all juveniles resemble their parents (and not the parental species) perfectly as well. Genetic studies verify its hybrid origin but are unsure of the time of creation, according to Wink et al. 2001 it might well be a very ancient hybrid while Parham et al. 2001 suppose that it is of rather recent origin.
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- Asian Turtle Trade Working Group (2000). Mauremys pritchardi. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 29 July 2007.
- Buskirk, James R.; Parham, James F. & Feldman, Chris R. (2005): On the hybridisation between two distantly related Asian turtles (Testudines: Sacalia × Mauremys). Salamandra 41: 21-26. PDF fulltext
- Parham, James Ford; Simison, W. Brian; Kozak, Kenneth H.; Feldman, Chris R. & Shi, Haitao (2001): New Chinese turtles: endangered or invalid? A reassessment of two species using mitochondrial DNA, allozyme electrophoresis and known-locality specimens. Animal Conservation 4(4): 357–367. HTML abstract Erratum: Animal Conservation 5(1): 86 HTML abstract
