Pelomedusa, Wagler, 1830

Petzold, Alice, Vargas-Ramírez, Mario, Kehlmaier, Christian, Vamberger, Melita, Branch, William R., Preez, Louis Du, Hofmeyr, Margaretha D., Meyer, Leon, Schleicher, Alfred, Široký, Pavel & Fritz, Uwe, 2014, A revision of African helmeted terrapins (Testudines: Pelomedusidae: Pelomedusa), with descriptions of six new species, Zootaxa 3795 (5), pp. 523-548 : 544

Pelomedusa candidate species B

The second candidate species is also represented by only one genetically verified voucher specimen. This terrapin from the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NMW 24451) was collected by Franz Werner in March 1914 at Al- Ubayyid (El Obeid), North Kurdufan, Sudan. It is a light-coloured subadult with an entirely yellow plastron and a straight carapacial length of 14.2 cm. Its pectoral scutes are triangular, but reach the plastral midline. As with candidate species A, the genetic distances of this Sudanese terrapin resemble the divergences among other distinct Pelomedusa species. The genetic lineage of candidate species B was hitherto unknown. According to our analyses of mtDNA sequences, candidate species B belongs into the northern clade of Pelomedusa and is, with maximum support, sister to P. schweinfurthi .

Pelomedusa candidate species B differs from all other Pelomedusa species by the presence of cytosine (C) instead of thymine (T) at positions 109 and 152, by the presence of adenine (A) instead of cytosine (C) or thymine (T) at positions 122 and 302, by the presence of thymine (T) instead of a gap at positions 126 and 168, and by the presence of guanine (G) instead of adenine (A) at position 154 of the 360-bp-long reference alignment of the 12S rRNA gene (Supporting Information).