Western Pond Turtle Emys marmorata  Baird & Girard, 1852

Taxonomic Comments:

Janzen, Hoover and Shaffer (1997 Chelonian Conservation Biology 2(4): 623-626), using mtDNA, examined populations of this taxon from throughout its range, and concluded that the turtles from Baja California, Mexico, and adjacent southern California, were an unnamed species distinct from C. marmorata to the north. The article was unclear as to whether the subspecific name pallida would be applied to the Baja California and southern California populations. Spinks and Shaffer (2005 Molecular Ecology 14: 2047-2064) demonstrated that this species consisted of four evolutionary lineages (i.e, species), but declined to name all of them pending additional research. Spinks, Phillip Q., & H. Bradley Shaffer (2009. Conflicting Mitochondrial and Nuclear Phylogenies for the Widely Disjunct Emys (Testudines: Emydidae) Species Complex, and What They Tell Us about Biogeography and Hybridization. Systematic Biology. 58(1): pp. 1-20), using mtDNA and nucleic DNA, demonstrated that the genus Actinemys should be synonymized with the genus Emys Duméril 1806. Standard common name for Emys marmorata remains Western Pond Turtle.