Posted by:
wulf
at Wed Sep 20 08:53:01 2006 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by wulf ]
Hi folks,
...you can't,obviously.snake taxonomy is very inconsistent the way it stands currently.
Well, I guess the problem in taxonomy is the use of different species concepts and the acceptance/denial of the subspecies rank in general.
Some of the (sub-)species were described long time ago, based on morphological characters only but, today DNA analysis is a more and more common procedure, sometimes able to distinguish even morphologically invariant specimens/populations via DNA properties. On the other hand not all (sub-)species have been examined using DNA analysis, so there still are plenty of "old fashioned descriptions" out there. Some will be proven valid, other will be sunk into synonymy.
There also might be distinction and differentation on the base of the venom of snakes, as already shown by Bryan Fry and WW.
Cheers,
Wulf
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http://www.leiopython.de - the white-lipped python site -
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