Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Appendix B: Table of Erroneous and Uncertain
Introduction Claims
Table Structure and Content
In addition to the questionable ancient introductions discussed under Appendix A,
Section 2 the literature contains a number of claimed herpetological introductions
that are either uncertain or invalid. Claims are uncertain either because the original
claim was noted to be questionable and hasn't subsequently been clarified or
because an original claim has subsequently been demonstrated to be false or unreli-
able. Many of the claimed introductions presented here are clearly erroneous, others
are speculative, a few are reasonable but insufficiently resolved to justify inclusion
in the primary database. Erroneous claims already corrected in the literature are
included here so as to save other researchers the effort of independently re-discovering
the corrections or missing them altogether. Other corrections to clearly erroneous
claims appear here for the first time (e.g., a number of
Emoia
species claimed by
C. Lever [2003] to be introduced). Several of the entries in Table B.1, however,
consist of speculative claims of introduction for which no compelling evidence is
yet presented. In each case I cite countervailing arguments and evidence, if available.
In some instances, the claims are not entirely unreasonable and no countervailing
argument has explicitly appeared in the literature but the evidence at present is not
sufficiently compelling to warrant their inclusion with the better-supported examples
collected in Appendix A. The fields in this table include species, locality for which
the introduction is claimed, citations for this claim, best estimate of the claim's
validity, reason or rationale for rejecting or questioning the claim, and authority for
refuting or questioning the claim. Obviously, in cases wherein the same citation
appears in the fields presenting and questioning the claim it is because that literature
source raised the reasonable possibility of introduction but lacked sufficient evidence
to clearly demonstrate or refute it.
