Mauremys
Eastern Mediterranean pond turtle ( southern Crete )
The terrapins ( Mauremys ) are a genus of Old World pond turtles, which is home to various species from the Mediterranean to East Asia and Japan. What types belong to this genus in detail, is not yet fully understood. The Annam pond turtle and the yellow pond turtle, both of which are native to Asia, are now placed in the genus Asian turtles ( Cathaiemys ).
The terrapins often stay in stagnant water and on land near the water on, but their German names they have of their occurrence in rather shallow, slow-flowing streams. You can swim well.
Features
The types of terrapins are a maximum of between 18 cm and 21 cm ( females ), the males are smaller and are between 11 cm and 13.5 cm tall.
Dissemination
In the western Mediterranean is the Moorish terrapin ( Mauremys leprosa ), also known as "Spanish Turtle ", from Portugal and Spain via North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya ) to West Africa (Senegal and Niger ) at home.
The Westkaspische turtle ( Mauremys rivulata ) earlier as a subspecies of the Caspian terrapin ( Mauremys caspica ) considered living in the territory of the Eastern Mediterranean countries of South Eastern Europe and Greece over the western Turkey to Lebanon and Israel and Syria. Also on the islands of Cyprus and Crete you can find them.
Further to the east includes the distribution area of the Caspian terrapin, at. It covers the south-western parts of the former Soviet Union between the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea on the eastern Turkey to Iran.
The Japanese pond turtle, Mauremys japonica, inhabiting the main Japanese islands of Honshu, Kyushu and Shikodu with some small islands in front of it.
System
The genus of terrapins has long been a prime example of an east -west split because of Ice Age extinctions. The Ice Age in the Pleistocene would have, according to this view left a gap in the distribution area between the Mediterranean species and the sister species in East Asia. Modern molecular genetic methods, however, showed that the decomposition must have occurred much earlier. It also turned out that the genus is paraphyletic, since the East Asian turtle species Chinemys and Ocadia that are currently allocated to a different subfamily of Geoemycidae, also need to make in the relationship of the terrapins. The sister species of this group are the Cuora ( Cuora ).
The fact that the crossing barriers even between those classified as different species types are not high, proved the description of two apparently new species Mauremys by the Americans Pritchard and Iverson. They had the turtles found in Chinese markets, where many different types are offered, and described them as Mauremys iversoni and Mauremys pritchardi. Through studies of mitochondrial genes could be detected at the Zoological Museum in Dresden, that it was both " types " hybrids, so results of crosses of two geographically widely separated species. In " Mauremys iversoni " could be identified as maternal parent species, the Chinese Box Turtle ( Cuora trifasciata ) and as a paternal parent species yellow pond turtle ( Mauremys mutica ). " Mauremys pritchardi " was created by crossing the Yellow river turtle as a maternal parent species with the Chinese three- keeled pond turtle ( Chinemys reevesii ).