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Nilssonia gangetica (CUVIER, 1825)

IUCN Red List - Nilssonia gangetica - Vulnerable, VU
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Higher TaxaTrionychidae (Trionychinae), Trionychoidea, Testudines (turtles)
Subspecies 
Common NamesE: Ganges Soft-shelled Turtle
G: Ganges-Weichschildkröte 
SynonymTrionyx gangeticus CUVIER 1825: 203
Trionys hurum GRAY 1831: 18 (partim)
Gymnopus duvaucelii DUMÉRIL & BIBRON 1835: 487 (partim)
Tyrse javanica — GRAY 1844: 47 (partim)
Tyrse gangetica — GRAY 1844: 47 (partim)
Aspilus gataghol GRAY 1872
Trionyx gangeticus — MURRAY 1886: 10
Trionyx gangeticus mahanaddicus ANNANDALE 1889
Isola gangeticus — BAUR 1893
Trionyx gangeticus — ALDERTON 1988
Aspideretes gangeticus — ERNST & BARBOUR 1989: 109
Aspideretes gangeticus — GEMEL & PRASCHAG 2003
Nilssonia gangetica — PRASCHAG et al. 2007
Aspideretes gangeticus — FRITZ & HAVAŠ 2007
Aspideretes gangeticus — ROHILLA & TIWARI 2008
Aspideretes gangeticus — BAIG et al. 2008
Aspideretes gangetica — LENZ 2012
Nilssonia gangetica — LIEBING et al. 2012
Nilssonia gangetica — TTWG 2014: 416
Nilssonia gangetica — TTWG 2021 
DistributionPakistan,
N India (incl. Gujarat, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland), Bangladesh, S Nepal (Ganges , Indus, and Mahanadi)

Type locality: "du Gange," (=Ganges River), India  
Reproductionoviparous. 
TypesSyntypes: MNHN-RA 4148 and MNHN-RA 9387 (2 syntypes) 
Diagnosis 
CommentSynonymy: Smith 1931 synonymized mahanaddicus with gangetica. For a more complete synonymy see GEMEL & PRASCHAG (2003). According to the molecular data of Engstrom et al. (2004) Aspideretes should be renamed Nillsonia as Nilssonia (GRAY 1872) has priority over Aspideretes (HAY 1903).

Gender: “The species name gangeticus is not in apposition, hence the ending must be -a (gangetica) and not -us. If Gray would have been of the opinion that Nilssonia is masculine he would have created the name Nilssonia formosus . But the fact that he named the turtle formosa tells me that Nilssonia is feminine.” (PRASCHAG 28 July 2009, pers. comm.).

Types: The specimen depicted in Plate LI as Trionyx gangeticus in Sowerby and Lear (1872) is the holotype of Trionyx bellii (Gray, 1872: 337; 1873a: 51), a name treated as a synonym of T. hurum by Boulenger (1889: 250), Smith (1931: 171), and WERMUTH & MERTENS (1961: 272); however, WERMUTH & MERTENS captioned their copy of Sowerby and Lear’s Pl. LI (1961: 271, Fig. 192a, b) as T. gangeticus.

Distribution: possibly in Bhutan (Lenz 2012 and references therein).

Habitat: freshwater (rivers and tributaries, lakes) 
EtymologyNamed after the type locality. 
References
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