hunting a new European viper species

Dedicated exclusively to field herping.

Moderator: Scott Waters

Post Reply
User avatar
Jeroen Speybroeck
Posts: 826
Joined: June 29th, 2011, 1:56 am
Location: Belgium
Contact:

hunting a new European viper species

Post by Jeroen Speybroeck »

Probably because my better half asked me to take it easy and not do any herping trips this year, I’ve been writing some less than positive stuff around here lately. Let me make it up to you by posting about my only (and very short) adventure of this year (excluding more local stuff and already 1000+ fire salamander records, of course…..).

A surprising new viper species (supposedly most closely related to far-away taxa from the Caucasus area!) was discovered in NW Italy, north of Biella, at the base of the Alps.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 8/abstract

During the first days of July 2016, the European herper elite was gathered and immediately jumped at it, hitting one of the areas where Walser Viper Vipera walser should be.

We took off from Belgium in the late afternoon. At first light, we stopped in Switzerland to look for Alpine Salamander Salamandra atra (along with more widespread species like Slow Worm Anguis fragilis, Viviparous Lizard Zootoca vivipara, Alpine Newt Ichthyosaura alpestris, Common Frog Rana temporaria and Common Toad Bufo bufo).

Image
first light

Image
Alpine Salamander Salamandra atra - I love salamanders but photographing them…

We reached our hotel a couple of hours later. Some of our friends, who arrived the night before, were having breakfast. Shaking hands and a hug and a kiss here and there; such a pleasure to meet so many friends together!

Here’s a group picture made later that day, with faces speaking of viper hunt success.

Image
So now you know what a mix of English, French, German, Dutch and Belgian herpers looks like. The dog is of Greek origin ;-).


We soon headed uphill to start the highly anticipated search in a beautiful mountain valley. Even though the weather turned nasty and we had to stop searching because of a heavy downpour, a decent number of animals turned up rather quickly, including Italian Slow Worm Anguis veronensis, Common Wall Lizard Podarcis muralis (at very high abundance during the lower parts of the hike), Smooth Snake Coronella austriaca, Asp Viper Vipera aspis, Viviparous Lizard Zootoca (vivipara) carniolica and some Walser Vipers Vipera walser including a pretty one Morgane found and which resulted in all happy faces.

Image
it’s going to rain and rain and rain …

Image
after two chunky asps, Jan caught this first, not too attractive juvenile Vipera walser

Image
Walser Viper Vipera walser - strong female Peter spotted

Image
Walser Viper Vipera walser


The next day, sunny skies and fairly hot weather, but several of the three snake species popped up again.

Image
viper hunting – Wouter and Bert

Image
Asp Viper Vipera aspis - a fairly aspis-like ‘atra’

Image
a smoothie each – Wouter and Peter with Smooth Snake Coronella austriaca

Image
one of many – Smooth Snake Coronella austriaca

Image
Viviparous Lizard Zootoca (vivipara) carniolica

Image
Patrick demonstrating the principle of “think before you climb”

Image
up on the beautiful plateau

Image

Image

Image
picture time!

Image
Walser Viper Vipera walser

Image
this is probably a real stunner after shedding – Asp Viper Vipera aspis

Image
another Walser

Image
Walser Viper Vipera walser

Image
Walser Viper Vipera walser

We decided to start earlier on day n°3, which was already our final day. Heavy cloud cover, however, so we (i.e. the four who drove from Belgium) took our chances to drive to a great spot in Switzerland, rather than to wait for weather conditions that might never come. Soon, we were in Switzerland, where sunny weather was the norm. Already fairly late in the day and hot when we reached a famous aspis walhalla, but we fortunately still managed to find a few.

Image
back at a great spot

Image
Asp Viper Vipera aspis - I really love those heavy-patterned animals from the Alps

Image
Asp Viper Vipera aspis

Image
Asp Viper Vipera aspis

Image
Asp Viper Vipera aspis

Image
Asp Viper Vipera aspis

Image
tired, happy, sad – time to go home again, ‘bye snake heaven!


What we’ve learned

* The (very) high wall lizard numbers at lower elevation do not seem to be replaced with Viviparous numbers higher up at all, even in swampy, boggy areas.
* Asp Viper is everywhere. Everywhere, really. Everywhere.
* Walser Viper looks exactly like certain Adder Vipera berus, but/so can be pretty.
* Too short a visit to get a hang of potential niche segregation between the two viper species, as we found them very close together in both drier, sunnier as well as wetter and more shady places. But with only 9 Walsers and 10-15 Asps, it is hard to draw conclusions. The ever changing weather plays such an important role, and you just cannot scrutinize steep mountains slopes as you would scan a heathland or similar habitat closer to my home.
* Walser does not seem to be particularly rare, but we were a big team. With variable dedication and skill, though, but most of us found at least one snake, whereas one hero found 24.
sjohn
Posts: 19
Joined: December 10th, 2013, 7:36 am
Location: NC

Re: hunting a new European viper species

Post by sjohn »

Great post..thanks
User avatar
Muchobirdnerd
Posts: 83
Joined: March 1st, 2014, 7:11 pm

Re: hunting a new European viper species

Post by Muchobirdnerd »

Really cool. Always enjoy seeing Euro herps.
Jimi
Posts: 1955
Joined: December 3rd, 2010, 12:06 pm

Re: hunting a new European viper species

Post by Jimi »

Super nice post and pics. Love the steep green. Got some of that around here, embedded in a lot of brown. Most of local steep green is pretty low-herp. Once again I'm tempted to browse airfares...

So was that Walser thing formerly mistaken for something else in a well-sampled area, and distinguished molecularly, or is that area poorly-sampled and a phenotypically new-looking creature was just discovered? The latter beggars belief...

Curious - who are its cousins? Seems obviously Pelias subgenus. Besides berus, it looks a bit like dinniki, darevskii, etc. Do you know of similarly-distributed (Alpine/Caucasian) plant or animal taxa with presumably similar dispersal & vicariance histories?

Sorry for all the questions, but the discovery of a new viper in Europe of all places is pretty interesting. Guess you'll need to update your book? (my copy is on backorder, hasn't arrived yet)

cheers
User avatar
BillMcGighan
Posts: 2362
Joined: June 7th, 2010, 9:23 am
Location: Unicoi, TN

Re: hunting a new European viper species

Post by BillMcGighan »

Spectacular habitat..... super post, JS.
User avatar
Jeroen Speybroeck
Posts: 826
Joined: June 29th, 2011, 1:56 am
Location: Belgium
Contact:

Re: hunting a new European viper species

Post by Jeroen Speybroeck »

Thanks for your replies!

It is probably best to follow that link I posted, as it seems to be an open source paper. Walser was long believed to represent an isolate of berus, as there's a natural and sizeable gap. While morphologically very similar to berus of the "Italian/Alpine" clade, the molecular data shows something very different and puts it in the ursinii and not the berus radiation, with darevskii and dinniki being the closest relatives. The trouble is that more nuclear data would be nice, but those relatives are tough to get samples of.

Walser is in the book. Got the info before it was published. :mrgreen:
Due to the slowliness of the journal it even lead to a practically simultaneous release.
NACairns
Posts: 372
Joined: December 30th, 2013, 7:27 am

Re: hunting a new European viper species

Post by NACairns »

Interesting post and article thanks for sharing both. I'm looking forward to them continuing on with some of the genetic with a few more markers do you know if that is their intention? Seems like conditions are right for horizontal gene transfer. Most of my questions fall to niche partitioning which you've already addressed, I hope you or your crew will make the trek again to see if there are some differences. In the Alps what type of hibernacula do most viper use?
Thanks again for a very cool post,
Best,
Nick
User avatar
Jeroen Speybroeck
Posts: 826
Joined: June 29th, 2011, 1:56 am
Location: Belgium
Contact:

Re: hunting a new European viper species

Post by Jeroen Speybroeck »

NACairns wrote:I'm looking forward to them continuing on with some of the genetic with a few more markers do you know if that is their intention?
Yes, but if they will & will be able to, is always wait-and-see. It seems not so much a matter of more markers, but rather getting a hand on nuclear data of the eastern species, from what I can tell. It would be also interesting to include material from a single, lower site where "berus" is present, as well as from museum specimens of the extinct populations of the Po Plain. The latter may have actually lived in a much more ursinii-like habitat.
The evolutionary reasoning in the paper actually puzzles me a bit, as they state that the taxa that have relictual ranges today (like walser and ursinii) would have colonised Europe at a later stage than the berus group. Seems odd to me that the widespread one would be the first...
The strangest element, however, is how walser looks sooo much like berus...
NACairns wrote:I hope you or your crew will make the trek again to see if there are some differences.
If not, I'm sure others will. We knew where to go for 10 months before the release of the paper, so we were possibly the first to knowingly go look for it. Now that the paper is out, we can expect hordes of viper maniacs roaming the hills. Undoubtedly, this will cause some disturbance, although the nature of the habitat is likely to offer enough protection.
NACairns wrote:In the Alps what type of hibernacula do most viper use?
Interesting question! I don't have any knowledge of studies on that, but I'd imagine they would dive into a sun-exposed rock pile that pops up through the snow early in spring. In any case, I've never heard of communal hibernation, as in northern Crotalus horridus.
Post Reply