Amphibia-Reptilia 26 (2005): 305-323 Taxonomic status of Triturus vittatus (Amphibia: Salamandridae) in western Turkey: trunk vertebrae count, genome size and allozyme data S.N. Litvinchuk 1 , A. Zuiderwijk 2 , L.J. Borkin 3 , J.M. Rosanov 1 Abstract. The banded newt, Triturus vittatus is suggested to consist of two species (T. ophryticus and T. vittatus). The northern taxon, T. ophryticus, is subdivided into two geographic fragments: the “western group” of populations from western Anatolian Turkey, and the “eastern group” distributed in the remaining part of the Pontic Turkey and western Caucasus. The western samples are characterized by a peculiar combination of various features. In this group the modal number of trunk vertebrae is equal to 12, like in T. v. vittatus and T. v. cilicensis, whereas the eastern group of T. ophryticus has 13 vertebrae. The amount of DNA per diploid nucleus, determined by flow cytometry, is higher in the western group (66.8-68.8 pg vs. 62.5-63.7 pg in the eastern group). Significant differences between both groups of T. ophryticus were revealed in allozymes (D Nei ’ 72 = 0.383 in average) as well. We allocate the western group of T. ophryticus to a separate subspecies, Triturus ophryticus nesterovi, subsp. nov. A paleogeographic scenario for T. vittatus and other newts is proposed. The taxonomic structure of the paraphyletic genus Triturus is discussed. We proposed to split the genus in four monophyletic genera Triturus sensu stricto, Lophinus, Mesotriton and Ommatotriton. Keywords: Amphibia, Salamandridae, Triturus, Triturus vittatus, Turkey, the Caucasus, trunk vertebrae, genome size, nuclear DNA content, flow cytometry, allozymes. Introduction The banded newt, Triturus vittatus (Gray, 1835), is a poorly studied member of the western Palearctic genus Triturus. The species inhabits the western Caucasus, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq, and, perhaps, Jordan. Borkin et al. (2003) provided a list of all known records of T. vittatus, with maps. The geographic distribution of the species falls into two main parts (fig. 1). The southern part ranges from the Mediter- ranean coast of Turkey and Israel in the west to the Hakkari Province in east-southern Turkey and Iraq in the east. This group of populations is subdivided into two subspecies, T. v. vittatus and T. v. cilicensis (Atatür, 1974; Olgun et al., 1 - Institute of Cytology, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg 194064, Tikhoretsky pr., 4, Russia; slitvinchuk@yahoo.com 2 - Department of Herpetology, Zoological Museum, Ams- terdam, P.O. Box 94766, 1090 GT, Netherlands; zuiderwijk@science.uva.nl 3 - Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg 199034, Universitetskaya nab., 1, Russia; lacerta@zin.ru 1997; Borkin et al., 2003). The northern portion of the species range extends from northwestern Anatolian Turkey to the western part of the Cau- casus, reaching eastern Georgia and Krasnodar Territory in Russia. Traditionally, the northern populations are attributed to T. v. ophryticus. However, the northern part of the range of T. v. ophryticus consists of two, probably, iso- lated fragments. The “western” one is distrib- uted in northwestern Anatolia, with the eastern- most records in Inebolu and Kastamonu. The “eastern” fragment coincides with the remain- ing portion of the subspecies’ range (Baran and Yilmaz, 1986; Arntzen and Olgun, 2000; Borkin et al., 2003). The history of systematics of the banded newt is complex. The British naturalist John Edward Gray caught the first three individuals of the species in park ponds in the vicinity of Lon- don in 1810. In 1830, he donated these spec- imens to the British Museum, with the label “Triton vittatus”. In his book, Jenyns (1835), based on Gray’s comments, accepted this name. Two more specimens were captured in Toul, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005. Also available online - www.brill.nl