Ichthyosaura Sonnini de Manoncourt and Latreille, 1802

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Salamandridae > Subfamily: Pleurodelinae > Genus: Ichthyosaura
1 species

Ichthyosaura Sonnini de Manoncourt and Latreille, 1801 "An. X", Hist. Nat. Rept., 4: 310. Type species: Proteus tritonius Laurenti, 1768, by monotypy. See nomenclatural comment. 

Hemitriton Dugès, 1852, Ann. Sci. Nat., Paris, Ser. 3, 17: 255. Type species: Triton alpestris Laurenti, 1768, by subsequent designation of Fatio, 1872, Fauna Vert. Suisse, 3: 516. Synonymy by Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2009, Alytes, 26: 51. Preoccupied by Hemitriton Van der Hoeven, 1833, Handb. Dierkd., 2: 305.

Mesotriton Bolkay, 1927, Zool. Anz., 72: 282. Type species: Triton alpestris Laurenti, 1768, by subsequent designation of Thorn, 1968, Salamand. Eur. Asie Afr. Nord: 191. Coined as a subgenus of Triton.

English Names

Alpine Newt (Dufresnes, 2019, Amph. Eur., N. Afr., & Middle East: 131). 

Distribution

Western Ukraine to southern Denmark, northern and eastern France, Belgium, Netherlands, northern Italy, and in Balkan Peninsula from western Bulgaria and Slovenia to central Greece; isolated populations in northwestern Spain and southern Italy; introduced in southern England and New Zealand. 

Comment

See comment under Triturus. Weisrock, Papenfuss, Macey, Litvinchuk, Polymeni, Uğurtaş, Zhao, Jowkar, and Larson, 2006, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 41: 855-857, recovered Mesotriton (as Triturus alpestris) as the sister taxon of Lissotriton (as the the Triturus vulgaris group). Arribas and Rivera, 2009, Butll. Soc. Catalana Herpetol., 18: 8–11, discussed the date of publication of the name Ichthyosaura and concluded that it is actually 1802 due to the vagaries of the French revolutionary calendar, although Harper, 1940, Am. Midl. Nat., 23: 701, concluded that this volume was distributed in 1801. Steinfartz, Vicario, Arntzen, and Caccone, 2007, J. Exp. Zool., 308B: 139-142, found Mesotriton to form the sister taxon of a group composed of Pachytriton and Cynops (sensu lato). Schmidtler, 2004, Sekretär, 4: 10-28, suggested that Ichthyosaura Latreille, 1801, has priority over Mesotriton Bolkay, 1927. See nomenclatural discussion by Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2009, Alytes, 26: 50-51. Cogǎlniceanu, Székely, Samoilă, Iosif, Tudor, Plăiaşu, Stănescu, and Rozylowicz, 2013, ZooKeys, 296: 35-57, provided a dot map for Romania. See Dufresnes, 2019, Amph. Eur., N. Afr., & Middle East: 131, for brief summary of identifying morphology and biology, a range map, as well as a photograph. Bernabò and Brunelli, 2019, Eur. Zool. J., 86: 38–53, provided a developmental staging table for the species in Calabria, Italy. 

Contained taxa (1 sp.):

Ichthyosaura alpestris (Laurenti, 1768)

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